


We are Sorry

by Tarton



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Choices, Depression, F/M, Food, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, Not my OTP, Random Encounters, Uncomfortable Author
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-06 01:35:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 33,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/730139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarton/pseuds/Tarton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott and Allison have broken up, and had spent the summer apart, for the most part. She still saw the shadow that was an almost constant feature. But she was refusing to acknowledge that.</p><p>She was also refusing to deal with her problems, but all that changes one afternoon, when she has a craving for burgers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Original Title Here

Allison wasn't in the mood for this, the training, the decision making. She wasn't in the mood to get her hair cut either, but she had promised Lydia that they would at least go into the mall; Lydia wanted to trim up a few hairs before school started in a week, and Allison wasn't sure what she wanted. Life had been hard. Haircuts and training didn’t seem normal when everything she was seemed to be broken and empty.

“Hey, you did the exercise right, but you failed to see the point of it. Do it again, and get your mind off of yourself.”

Thankfully, today’s instructor wasn't her father, he was an underling, or rather, a lesser ranked hunter. And at the moment, Allison outranked just about everyone within a hundred miles.

So she did the exercise again, this time, trying to put a bit more trepidation in her movements, as if she was thinking. They had failed to change the cut up and slightly damaged dummies from before, and now, it was easy to find out exactly which ones were going to light up yellow, which ones were going to light up red, and which ones were supposed to be human. There were a lot more cuts on the red lights.

The instructor threw her a towel, but the depressing thing was, she wasn’t sweating, not right now. There was no adrenaline, no stress, it was all mechanical. A flick of the wrist here, a taunt bow string, some knives flicked into the sweet spots of every target. She was doing all of the mechanical things perfectly, even her instances of hesitation were becoming mechanical. She was “thinking” about who to kill, if they were harming a human, if they were close enough to her to constitute a threat, but they all had lit up, and wasn’t that enough?

Her dad came through the door, like he always did after she was having a really difficult day and she really didn’t want to deal with him, but she was used to it by now… mostly. He still looked really sad, a lot. It made her feel slightly guilty that she wasn’t being a better daughter to him. A better daughter for her mother, even if her mother was dead.

Finally, when the other hunter handed over a report, he spoke to her, “You can’t keep faking it Alison, this isn’t how it is supposed to be. We have a responsibility, and since I don’t want anyone else coming in here, trying to take over our territory, well, I just want you to be really ready, ok? I won’t be here forever, and we both know that we have to protect ourselves, we don’t want the any more pain.” His voice caught in his throat, it was doing that a lot these days. It was sickening.

“I miss her too, ok?” Alcohol was sounding good right now. It was Thursday, but maybe she could sleep over at Lydia’s, or rather, just go out into the woods and enjoy a bottle of Tequila and a few limes and a shit ton of Gatorade tomorrow morning. Yeah, that was a good idea.

“I know.” His voice was a whisper, a depressing and depressed whisper with a hint of betrayal that never got too far in. They knew everything now, and it didn’t help.

Allison was used to this, this new broken father that was almost as bad as the father who kidnapped her without warning. At least that dad smiled. A little.

“I’m going to Lydia’s, and no, you aren’t allowed to check in on me every hour, I am a big girl, and Lydia is apparently better at spotting things than me, so I will be safe, you know it.”

It was the end of the argument, and so her father left, and that was that.

Lydia’s place was beautifully decorated, especially since she got to redo her bedroom, and now, now they were sitting in a beautifully chic living room, drinking a mug of coffee each. Allison wasn’t much for conversation anymore, but with Lydia, it wasn’t forced, and they could just as well start talking about math and science rather than feelings and hurting.

Lydia was of course the first to speak, “You know what is going on with them?”

Lydia wasn’t talking to them either, this wasn’t news, but she was still talking to Stiles, and even if she had reluctantly forgiven Allison, there were still hard feelings somewhere in that tone. “No, and my dad won’t tell me anything either, so I don’t know why you bother asking me anymore. I am as much in the dark as you are.”

“Scott still dropping by your room at night?”

It wasn’t really a question, it was a statement. Of course Scott, who loved her with a fierceness that was overwhelming right now, stopped by every night, just to sit outside of her window, out of sight. He was good at being covert, except for the fact that he always casted a shadow when he got there, and when he left. She had gotten really good at faking sleep lately, just so he would leave, knowing that she was sleeping… and it was pain, and it was sadness, and it was death.

Allison decided to not answer the question, “Are you still in touch with Jackson?”

Lydia wasn’t. Both of them knew that it hurt. But Lydia had started it. And right now, they were two bitter harpies, except they weren’t ugly, nor were they planning on killing everybody, yet.

Lydia gave her a dark look, but then she shook her head, “fair point. Let’s go. I want to go to shopping for a new top.”

“Another new top? Why?”

Lydia’s eyes were sharp and calculating, but they also had a small spark of mischief, “there are cute boys in this town, and they don’t care how smart or how human I am. And I want to see if I can’t find someone who compliments my goals a bit better.”

Allison shook her hair out, it was starting to get too long, and maybe it was time to do something drastic, maybe it was time for a trim. Who knows…?

A few hours later, Lydia had four different bags under her arms, and one of them was full of new tops. She had also gone to the jewelry department picking up too many cute and shiny bracelets, more than Allison would have thought possible. She swung by the toys, as depressing as that department was. She looked at everything under the sun for a while, and picked up a construction set of something. Allison didn’t bother asking. She had seen wolf toys not far away, and there was a tightness in her chest that wasn’t easing, not even after she had dropped Lydia at her place, not when she was drinking a fourth of the bottle from her trunk, not when she started to get cold and built a little fire. 

“Not tonight Scott.”

It was so automatic to her now, the presence just outside her actual sight, “I don’t want to do this tonight, just please? Go?”

The presence dissipated, but then came back, stronger, closer. “No, I don’t want this, not tonight, please?” she took another swig.

It was gone, but not before she felt the sadness of the request. Did she want him here with her? Did she want to touch his face, to feel his love? No, not tonight, she needed to grieve, she needed to stop feeling this sadness, and the tequila was helping, incrementally. She felt herself get warmer, then she was heavy, and then she was sleeping.

She woke up comfortable. More comfortable than she should have been. Was she in a sleeping bag? She tried to move her arms, and yes, she was in a sleeping bag. Mornings after drinking tequila were the worse. And now she knew it. Better than the schnapps though, much better. Her fire was still going, impossibly. Well maybe not, she was in a sleeping bag, and yes, that was a pillow under her head. Was she really so far gone that this was really happening?

“You’re up. Good. We need to talk.” It was her dad.

The next few days went by in a wave of boredom, and then it was Tuesday, and time for school. First day of school was the worst, not as bad as switching after a few months in one school, but still pretty bad. Lydia had picked her up, and they had a few classes together this year, but that wasn’t really here or there. Allison noticed that Lydia parked further away from the front than usual, conspicuously close to the blue Jeep. But far enough away that they weren’t right next to it. Scott’s bike was in the rack. The bike was a feature on that rack, rain or shine, winter or spring, there was that damned bike. If Allison had been allowed to bring weapons to school anymore, she would have put a knife through both tires, and not even cared.

Lydia took to the front doors like she owned the place, which she does in many ways. She was a kingless queen, and she held herself aloft on the admiring gazes of both upper and lower classmen. Her strawberry hair flowed in the nonexistent breeze of her walk, she looked great. Allison was a bit self-conscious. Maybe she shouldn’t have cut her hair so short. She hasn’t had hair this short since she was in middle school, and there was definitely something about Victoria Beckham back then. Now she sees all the girls with long flowing manes, lions would be jealous. She feels the eyes. She was already the girl with the weird family, the family that kept dying. And yeah, there was already her weirdness, her sudden hyper vigilance. She had even almost flipped a boy who wanted to return a pen he had given her. There was enough stares without the haircut adding to it.

AP Chem for Lydia, English, thankfully without anyone there who could hear her heart beating, Allison settled into a thankfully short school day, she and Lydia had both gotten 8th period off. Her dad didn’t want to sign her out an hour early, but that was the compromise they had struck, and now she was cooperating, or at least pretending to. Lunch was almost tense. Lydia sat down by Danny, who happened to not notice that Lydia wasn’t going to ask any questions about if he was still in touch with Jackson. Maybe she knew he was, maybe she knew he wasn’t. Allison didn’t know. 

Danny smiled over Allison’s shoulder, “hey Stilinski. What’s up?”

Stilinski must have answered something, but Allison wasn’t going to pay any attention to that, she knew that where Stiles was, Scott was. She felt a foot touch her leg, a warning and a comfort. “So where is McCall?”

Stiles hissed, “He happens to have detention already, but it’s only a lunch detention after we ended up breaking a desk in Math this morning.”

Lydia decided to ask, she had to ask, it had been worrying her since summer was starting to wane, although, it didn’t feel like summer, not really, not here. “When is your first match?”

“Next week Friday,” Danny answered, “we are lucky our varsity and JV teams practiced enough together than the few fresh-meat added to our varsity team isn’t so horrible. They are all a bunch of bench warmers, not like me and Stilinski here. Co-Captains for life!” a fist bump later and Stiles was gone.

Danny’s smile was dull, his best friend had died, and sure, he knew that Jackson wasn’t really dead. Allison had heard the story Stiles had concocted to ease Danny’s mind, to give Jackson a chance to make everyone who knew him well. Those who would find it strange to see Lydia alone, not sad, just hurt. Jackson had wanted to give them one last thing, peace of mind. And yes, Danny was the only one that Jackson had wanted to see again. It didn’t help that Stiles said something stupid, and yeah Jackson wolfed out at some point, but according to Lydia, Danny had already known about werewolves, sort of. But seeing one was a shock to anyone.

Allison looked down at her salad, suddenly wishing she was eating a big greasy burger and fries, which wouldn’t remind her of Scott, not here. No. Not ever. Lydia’s foot had remained on her leg, or maybe it was Danny’s. Either way, Allison couldn’t really look at either of them as they talked about how easy their AP class loads were going to be. They talked about syllabi and sports, and if Lydia should suddenly become a cheer leader. She and Danny laughed like they weren’t both hurting from pain, lots of pain. It was like Allison could feel it, like they were sending it off them in waves.

She ate her salad in silence, looking up and nodding at the few questions that were flung her way, or saying something non-committal to weekend plans, because she was still grounded, and she was completely not wanting to go, it was a lacrosse thing. They parted before the bell rang, and Allison finally decided that she was going to make it. Except she had AP Physics, and as much as she hadn’t seen head or tail of Scott, he was there, sitting quietly and trying not to seem slightly ecstatic that she was walking through the door, he had chosen the furthest desk from the front door, so she chose the closest desk to that said door, but one desk back; she wasn’t a nerd, not yet anyways.

Allison was seeing red for a little while, not literally, because she wasn’t a werewolf, but metaphors like that seemed apropos. Well one hour, then another hour, and she could go home, or rather go to the burger shop on the way home, then change for practice, then maybe do homework if she felt up to it.

Class was hell. The teacher had a seating chart, and Argent happened to be a lot closer to McCall than either of them wanted to be. But yeah, there was a definite apologizing smile when she had caught him looking at her. She was furious. And of course Lydia wasn’t having the burger stand idea, no, she was going to be busy, but Allison had politely asked to be dropped off at the burger stand anyways, she would eat and be home in plenty of time, no problem. Lydia reluctantly agreed, but only because she wanted to pick up the book of Latin that she had ordered from a distant library, and burger stand drop offs were perfect excuses to go downtown.

The ride wasn’t particularly chatty, just quiet and short questions about classes, if she had any incidents, and yeah, Allison lied, so what? Lydia must have already known, if she was even asking. She always knew everything. Lydia was too smart, too perceptive and much more connected than anyone would have guessed from her front of superiority. The burger stand was empty, so Allison thanked Lydia again, and went up to the front counter, ignoring the look from one of the Deputies that also happened to be a hunter, and looking for which flavor of shake she was craving. The owner served her a number, along with the cup of water she had asked for, and told her to go ahead and her food was going to magic itself to her table.

She looked around for an empty booth far away from the hunter, but he was centrally located around everything. That’s when she saw the corner, just out of his sight, and yes, it looked empty. So Allison took it, she wanted to eat her meal and feel vindicated and angry and let it fuel her practice, which would hopefully be blissfully complex and physically based. She wanted to do automatic things, and thinking wasn’t automatic. She shrugged off her jacket, a light olive green thing that she had worn a few years back. Sure it was a bit small, but her mother had once said that women could get away with it, that layers were made for this sort of thing. Or maybe she had said that about something else. Or maybe she never said it.

Allison rounded the corner, but heard something from behind her, so she turned, the hunter was getting up, moving towards the door with purpose, maybe to inform her father that she was out of school, maybe the hunter was just done with the meal in front of him, and needed to get back to work, either way Allison didn’t care too much. She threw her jacket into the booth, and took her seat.

The muddled humph made her jump. There, in the supposed to be empty booth, the one that was just out of sight from the hunter, sat one very put-upon-looking Derek Hale. He looked at her jacket for a second, then at her, then at her jacket, which was touching his thigh, then at her again, taking in her much shorter hair, then back to her jacket. His greasy burger and fries were basically untouched, or rather they were touched, but now they were just sitting there, like he had been waiting for them to start running before he pounced on them, like the animal that was in him.

But then Derek did something amazingly human, “that was interesting.”

Allison shook her head, “what?”

“I’ve been trailed by that guy all day, I didn’t know if he was a hunter or just thinking that I was up to my usual quasi-murderous rages, but I guess he must have been a hunter. Did you want to talk? Or should I be worried about my food?”

Allison had heard from both Stiles and Scott how little Derek talked, but this was surprisingly not what she expected from her first solo experience with him. Not at all.

“Umm…” that was the only sound that had escaped from her mouth.

“Sit,” it wasn’t a command, a request.

Allison sat. She wasn’t sure why, she just did. “Did you come here to talk about Saturday?”

Allison searched her mind, Saturday night, she was sleeping in bed, and there was a knock at the back door, and that was all she heard, but she was sleeping, and Scott was there, she remembered that much. His shadow was more blatant than usual, like he wasn’t trying to stay hidden.

Derek looked at his burger again, it hand finger marks on it, the finger marks that clearly showed that he had picked up his food, but placed it back down, “how much do you hate me? Enough to poison me?”

Allison didn’t think she would ever do that to anyone, no, she wasn’t a poison type of girl, she was a stabber, “no, I can’t speak for the hunter that was here before, but I wouldn’t give orders to poison you, that being said, I have Argent brand wolf’s bane in my back pocket, always carry a bullet, just in case, and I will allow you to burn it, just to save yourself, here.” She pulled out the bullet, handed it to Derek, and that was that. He took a bite. “What happened on Saturday?”

Derek smiled, apparently the burger was safe. “Isaac convinced me to tell your dad that there was an Omega in the woods, not far from town. He wanted to join our pack, or he didn’t want to, I couldn’t decide, he was acting a little disoriented. So Isaac told your dad, and I heard you wake up, you might have seen me. I don’t know, just thought you were mad about me sneaking outside your window.”

The waitress came with Allison’s burger, fries and shake. They looked good. “I thought it was Scott. And yeah, I was upset, but not because I thought it was you. I don’t want him to pine for me so close, it hurts.”

Derek assessed her face, “I can tell him not to, although, it might not stop him, he has a will of his own.”

Derek looked, thoughtful for a second. Allison didn’t have anything to add at the moment. She took a drink of chocolate ice cream malt mix, and decided that she should have gone with strawberry. “I heard Lydia drop you off. You said that you had a training appointment,” Derek took a bit out of a few fries. “You going to be late?”

Allison polished off the burger, she was comfortably full now and this conversation, this interaction, wasn’t bad. It felt almost normal. But then she thought about it more, and she decided that she really shouldn’t think about it right now. She would be angry, and there was one single wolves’ bane bullet just sitting on the table, it would be tempting. And yet, as she thought all about that, there is no anger, no will to kill. Just comfortable silence, and yeah, that hint of danger that she had missed a bit. Allison took a fry, she hadn’t said anything in minutes, she probably should. “Yeah, probably.”

Derek leveled a thoughtful stare at her, “I’ll give you a ride.”

It wasn’t a request, but Allison knew that she could say no if she wanted to. But here, in the comfortable silence, in the feeling of greasy burgers and fries, she decided not to stop herself. Derek pulled out his wallet, put a few singles down on the table, and picked up his leather jacket from the corner of the booth, he put it on, straightening up all the while. Allison finished her chocolate shake, feeling bemused that this was her most normal interaction of the month, the one that she thought would put her off the deep end more than any other, and soon she was standing too.

Derek held her jacket out, both hands, like he would help her put it on if she asked him to, but she just took it, and he held the door, and he opened her door on the car, and then he pulled up to her house, and they said terse goodbyes and that was it.

When Allison walked into the house, as the Camero was turning around the bend and out of sight, she might have felt a small smile touch her face. And yeah, she was definitely going to have to think about all of this later.

 

***


	2. The Original Title.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just read it... I am too lazy.

Allison was finishing up a problem in Calculus. She was going to graduate from Beacon Hills if it killed her, and according to her father, it might, if she didn’t get better at living as a hunter. The Omega situation never even hit her radar after Tuesday, and Friday night was winding down. There was a knock at the door. “Come in.”

Her father looked down at all of the books piled on her bed, and he looked at her, wearing sweat pants and a too big for her t-shirt. They were definitely not sexy clothes, he seemed to relax a bit. “No boys in your closet, right?”

Allison rolled her eyes, “No boys. None, whatsoever. None in the closet, none on the roof, and none waiting in the wings of the neighborhood, waiting till you go to sleep. One might show up later, but I keep on telling him to go away.”

Her dad had heard the rant, had told Scott to leave her alone, but he was still coming back, less frequently than he had at the beginning of summer, but still, he was there. “How is school going?”

Allison looked at him like he might be stupid, “I hate it, but I am going. AP Physics is a pain, but I’m sure you already know that, the new school secretary looks very familiar. I think I sparred with her a few months back.” She said it dismissively, as if that really wasn’t the reason for her annoyance at the moment. But yeah, physics was horrible, at least they didn’t have something horrible, like French, together. That would be awkward, especially since the teacher insisted on them writing love poetry every week, “Friday is the day for hidden romance to blossom, even if it’s fake.”

Mr. Argent smirked, “what?”

“Oh, I didn’t realize that I said that out loud,” she had done it on purpose, “my French teacher is insistent that we have to write poetry in order to fully appreciate the French language, and the French culture. I can’t really bother thinking about it too much, I am done with it. I wrote three poems about how I love his green brown eyes or something dumb like that. I don’t know, I am pretty sure he doesn’t exist.”

“I’m sure you’ll pass French with flying colors, he sounds like a nice boy, introduce us sometime, you know, if you want.”

Allison just rolled her eyes, “I’ll keep it in mind. So why are you gracing me with your paternal presence tonight? Did you come to remind me that I am no longer grounded? And that I should go to the Lacrosse game?”

Of course he was frowning, he didn’t do much else, not recently. The smirk must have used up all of his happy reserves, “So, I was going over some hunter reports, and as your deputy, I was just signing off on them until I got to a particularly interesting one from a particularly low ranked hunter. Did you know that I actually do read them all?”

Allison didn’t need a reminder of how much she was in control of this area’s hunters, but decided not to push it, “Yes, I know you do, and you pass on all major incident reports and make me sign it without reading the details. We have gone through this a million times. I swear.”

His eyebrows spoke to her heart, he was slightly annoyed, but he loved her, it was written plainly on his face, “Well, I noticed that on Tuesday at 2:11, there was a hunter trailing an Alpha, and then he was relieved of trailing duties at 2:24, and this is where it get’s interesting. The report said that after he left, the person who relieved him sat down with the Alpha he had been trailing. Are you following so far?”

Allison nodded, not saying a word.

“There are only two people who could relieve any hunter of his duty to follow Derek Hale, any idea who those two people are?”

Allison shook her head, she knew though; she hadn’t known then, but now it all made sense. “Well, when were you going to tell me that you had lunch with Derek Hale?”

Allison thought for a second, and then decided to tell her father the truth; something she wasn’t exactly sure was worth it. “I was having a bad day, I wanted fries and a burger, I saw the hunter, I went to where he wouldn’t be able to see me, and then I threw my jacket into Derek’s lap. We sat civilly and then he drove me home, because I was running late for practice.”

Her father arched an eyebrow, “You sat civilly with Derek?”

“Yes.”

He left it at that, but continued on, “was there any talking, and if so, what did he say?”

Allison thought about it a lot, nothing was really said, “Just Saturday was mentioned, and then Scott, he said that he would tell Scott to stop coming by. That was it.”

“Oh,” clearly there was a bigger thing that needed to be talked about, like her mother’s death. “Well I am glad that you can talk civilly with the Alpha, I might not like the man, but it is important that you show that you have a cool head for that sort of thing. Mind you, the most he has done lately is go to the hardware store, and once to the local computer place. He has made purchases, at both, but nothing surprising, or out of the ordinary.”

Allison had a different question, “why haven’t you told me about the lone Omega?”

“Wasn’t important, you don’t need to know about any of the little things. He came to town, rented a hotel room, then went out to Derek’s place. He left the day after, he was on a business trip apparently, from what we can tell.”

Allison wondered why Derek thought the Omega wanted to be part of the pack, but didn’t voice her thoughts to her father, so he was quiet, waiting for her to fight the lack of knowledge. She didn’t. she didn’t want to.

So he was forced to continue, “Well, as I said, he was on a long drive, just passing through, he basically deferred to the local pack, and passed through, proper procedure, and then Isaac came to tell me about it. Good kid that Isaac, unfortunate…”

Whatever was unfortunate about Isaac, Allison wasn’t privy to. He wished her a good night and walked out the door.

The next day, Lydia text four times about the party, all of which Allison was privileged enough to reply “Practice” to while she was slinging arrows and throwing knives. It was a relaxing practice, and probably one of the most fun. She even had a bruise that was from a well played defensive maneuver. She felt invincible. And it might have had something to do with the shadow outside her window last night. Well the two shadows that had shown up outside her window. The first was stealthy, but still, there was a shadow. The second followed closely behind, and it wasn’t being stealthy at all, it was blatant and imposing. And yeah, they were gone in under five minutes.

Of course, the little bit of happy that that caused was going to be noticeable to EVERYONE with eyes. And sure, her father let her go an hour earlier than usual, but that wasn’t any reason why she had to go to a party. Except that Lydia had called the house phone, there was her number, written on a post-it note, plastered on the door of her bedroom door, bright green, almost sickening in color. “Lydia is coming to pick you up for the party, she said dress skanky. I am only obligated to write that down because she said she would know if I didn’t. Why do you have such weird friends?”

Her father’s humor was almost surprisingly refreshing. And yes, she would know if her father had written skanky, or said it. Mind you Allison had nothing skanky, Lydia had made sure of that. She had flirty, chic, alluring and dangerous. No skanky on the list. She decided to go with alluring tonight, hoping that Lydia was going to dress dangerously, because alluring was party friendly without being too suggestive. Lydia text her ten minutes before she was going to leave. Warning and promises all in the four words on the screen, “ten minutes, or else.”

Whatever the or else meant, Allison wouldn’t know. “Dad, can I bring a small hunting knife? There will be werewolves, I guarantee it.” Her father gave her a look, a frown plastered on his face, “No?”

He smiled a bit, then he looked at her again, “are you trying to impress someone?”

The question made her think twice, “No.”

“Aren’t you showing a bit too much skin?”

“Dad! This is not too much skin, it’s just a halter top, it doesn’t show anything. It’s backless, that’s all!”

Her father looked at her again, the look on his face was a nostalgic ‘I wish my little girl was always going to be a little girl’ sort of sappy thing that she was in no mood for. “Well, that rules out the side holster. Here,” he pulled a small gun from under the counter he was sitting at. “This is non-lethal, to werewolves, so don’t change the ammo, and this is my laminated permission for you to have it, and this my one and only daughter,” he said this in such a sweet voice, “is the clip, so keep them separate unless you need to.”

He left her with such an open ended permission slip, she couldn’t believe it. “Thanks, am I allowed to shoot before the bloodshed starts, or after it is over?”

Her father smiled a bit, “Well, I assume that you can tell the difference between bloodshed and out of control teens, but yes, you are allowed to shoot, if there is trouble. And don’t forget why you have a cell phone either. I will start up the truck and go. Where is the party exactly?”

She was reluctantly obliged to give her dad the address, “and I will call you if me or Lydia have a drop of alcohol. Promise.”

He raised an eyebrow, “do you want me to ground you again?”

She shook her head, he wasn’t going to forget the tequila incident anytime soon. But thankfully, the doorbell rang, and Lydia wished Mr. Argent a good night. And they were off, to a potentially horrible but maybe ok party.

Of course, Lydia and Danny just played popular all night, and Allison wasn’t really in the mood to be around people she hardly knew, but Stiles and Scott were suddenly on the outskirts of the popular people, and so was Isaac, although he was so shy, nobody noticed. So Allison decided to head out of the party entirely, she walked around one of the low walls, where she saw puffs of smoke and heard some strange mewing sounds coming from behind the bushes. She didn’t want to investigate too closely. She was walking towards the street, and then she saw him.

He looked at her, not surprised to see her out on the street at all, “Hi.”

She walked toward him, purpose and intent unclear, but she wanted to talk to him again. “Hi.”

It was as simple as that, she stood next to him, in a halter top and pants that screamed cold, and he was bundled up in a leather jacket and everything else that screamed hot. They were standing in silence, nothing left or right happening.

A few minutes later, after she sat down on the hood of the car he was on, she decided that she should probably say something. “Thanks.”

Derek looked at her, then nodded.

They sat in silence for longer. She was starting to get a bit cold, but she wasn’t complaining. There was something to parties like this, even when half of it was outside, the entire event was always warmer than the rest of the world, and suddenly she wished she wasn’t showing so much skin. Her dad might have been right. “Here”

She looked up, Derek was in a t-shirt and jeans, handing her his jacket, much like he had done all those months ago, was that really almost a year ago? She took it gingerly. “But won’t you be cold?” He gave her a flash of red, “thanks, again.”

A total of seven words, and then an hour past, she decided to break the silence again, “why are you here exactly?”

Derek looked at her, “They are here, so I decided to make sure they weren’t doing anything stupid, not like I have much else to do on a Saturday night.”

She looked at him, was he this talkative to Isaac? She hadn’t really talked to Isaac ever, but from what she had heard… Maybe what she had heard came from bad sources. “Ok, so why aren’t you in the party?”

Derek smiled, “me, hang with a bunch of kids?”

Allison scoffed, “yeah, I know what you mean.”

Derek must have caught something in her voice, or maybe he was confused on her meaning of the words, “so why are you here?” the emphasis on here was clear.

“I don’t fit with them anymore.”

Derek nodded, but didn’t comment.

Half an hour passed, both of them hearing the music from the street, just waiting for the police to come, but it was still early enough. Derek was just staring ahead, Allison was swaying a bit with the music, not quite sure why she was out here anymore. She wanted to dance, but she didn’t want to dance with teenagers, not after what she felt, how could the world be so carefree?

“I’m sorry.”

The voice had been so small, Allison might have missed it. But she stopped swaying and stared at Derek, “What?” her voice wasn’t as sharp as she wanted it to be.

“I said I’m sorry.” His voice was louder.

“What exactly are you sorry about?” Allison felt the weight of the small gun in her purse, it wouldn’t kill him, but it would hurt him, just enough.

“I’m sorry that I bit your mother, I am sorry that I didn’t have more self-control. I’m sorry that she died because of me.”

It had been the admission of guilt rather than the justification that paused her gun hand. “I know why you did it. I know what she was doing. I know it all now.”

Derek didn’t look in her eyes, “I could have done it like a human, I think. I keep thinking back to that night, hearing Scott, feeling the knife, being afraid. I should have stayed human. You’d still have a mom tonight if I had.”

Allison was almost furious. But she found no fury for Derek, she was furious at her mother. “She shouldn’t have been there; she shouldn’t have tried to kill my ex-boyfriend, no matter what I was doing with him. She should have just let you save him, not attacked you. She shouldn’t have done anything like that at all. It goes against the codes.”

Derek finally look at her in the eye, “You mom, she loved you so much. I might not have liked her, on principal, but if any mother loved a daughter more than yours; well there isn’t one. Sure she was wrong, I know that, but she did it because she loved you.”

Allison felt tears, she hadn’t cried since the night she had trashed her room. All those months ago. She cried now, because suddenly her mother’s note made sense. Derek had killed her, but she was wrong, it wasn’t Derek, it was her. Allison felt broken, she blamed herself.

“She’s dead because of me, because I was in love with Scott.”

Suddenly there was weight around her shoulder, “No,” Derek said, “don’t blame yourself for other people’s actions. How could you know what your mother would do? How could you? Don’t blame yourself, blame me.”

Allison wanted to, she really wanted to blame him, so she started punching, blindly, and repeatedly she would wail, and sob, and she was punching him like her dad taught her. She was hitting every spot that would hurt, she even threw in a few kicks, and he just took it. And then she collapsed, right there, next to his Camero. There was no more fight in Allison Argent, and she didn’t care.

 

***


	3. 3... in which stuff happens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allison has some realizations to come to, good thing she isn't handling those right now, now was time to explain things to her dad.

Of course, when the sun came out in the morning, Allison would regret the episode that occurred the night before. Sundays were always tortuous. But now, now that she had no distractions to pull her attention away from the torture in front of her, she wasn’t prepared for it. She had all day to her thoughts. It wasn’t a prospect that she was looking forward to.

Last night, she, as the head of a hunter clan, had broken down in front of an Alpha, and she had been picked up and put into the front seat of an Alpha’s car. And what was worse, she couldn’t even justify to her father why she had come into the house through her window, because there was no justification. Allison decided that her father hadn’t seen or heard Derek coming or going, but when Lydia had called her phone, and she didn’t pick it up, she had called the house. He didn’t buy her story of being bored, especially since her eyes were probably a little puffy, but he gave the excuse to Lydia, and promised to tell Allison that she was in so much trouble.

They hadn’t talked, and Allison thought maybe it had something to do with that morning, or maybe something in her face. But now, here in the morning, it looked like it was something else. Allison had fallen asleep in what she had worn to the party, and a leather jacket. She mentally cursed herself for not remembering that she was wearing, or that Derek hadn’t taken it back, but she had been crying when he left.

She remembered his face, not pity and not uncomfortable, but strong, almost supportive. “You needed that,” he had said, “you’ll need more of these type of nights, before you realize the truth.”

She hadn’t said a word, and then he was continuing.

“Just remember that she loved you, remember the activities you two did together, remember how much you love her. She’ll be with you as long as you keep her with you, so keep her with you.”

It sounded so good last night, hearing those words were a soothing balm for her wounds. But right now, they sounded so cliché, so cheesy. She had fallen asleep thinking of her mother, and had dreamed about the time that they had baked brownies for her classmates. Allison hadn’t brought the brownies into class, because that morning, before she had a chance to bring them out of her backpack, another classmate had already brought treats, for his real birthday. Allison had thrown out the brownies after school, in the girls bathroom. She never told her mother, but she was happy that they had made them together, and when her mother asked her about it, and she had smiled and said how happy everyone was. And so they were both happy.

Allison admitted that the dream was just that, a dream. Her mother had only made brownies with her once, and the class hadn’t been happy to eat them, but the dream was better, so she kept the dream.

An hour later, it was too far past her usual sleep in time to be plausible, so she got out of bed, took off the leather jacket and the halter, and put on a t-shirt and walked out of her room. Her jeans weren’t that comfortable sleeping in, but she wasn’t going to change into sweats, not yet anyways.

Her dad was sitting on the counter, waiting. “Morning.”

She wasn’t ready for this, she wanted to go back to her room, and sleep until the next year, when she would be off to college, or maybe she could go away sooner than that, move the hunters away from Beacon Hills and to somewhere else, close, but far enough away that she wouldn’t have to deal with them. She suddenly realized that she wasn’t part of Scott’s pack, and that startled her. She hadn’t been for a while, but suddenly, she wasn’t with Scott, not even in the back of her head.

Her dad had stayed silent, and was waiting. She needed to say something to him. “I’m sorry.”

Her father raised an eyebrow. She didn’t want to explain. “I had a bit of a breakdown last night, ended up crying, someone had to bring me home.”

The word breakdown was something that had been missing from the house’s vocabulary since the night that her mom had committed suicide. Her father instantly ditched the interrogation tactics. He stood up, and hugged her. He had hugged her plenty of times since the night her grandfather had been found out for exactly what he was. And yeah, Allison hadn’t accepted it at first; she felt like a monster, she still did. But this morning, she felt ok about it. She needed this. And suddenly Derek’s words weren’t so cheesy and clichéd, they were apt. 

“Do you want to talk about exactly what happened?”

Allison looked up from her hug, her dad was older now, grey hair and sad eyes. She felt his strong muscles supporting her weight, but she also saw all his vulnerabilities. “Yes, but can it wait till after I eat and have coffee?”

He smiled down at her, planting a kiss on her forehead, like he would always plant a kiss on her, and how she hoped he always would. He was always a lot more affectionate than her mother. He wouldn’t have tried to kill Scott, not ever. She knew that. Her mother’s love was strong, but her father’s love, if possible, was stronger.

She ate breakfast, offered to get him something, but he had already eaten, and they sat down at the counter, drinking coffee, silently. “So, I was at the party. With Lydia, and a whole bunch of other people.” She started there, the truth. After this point though, she wasn’t sure how much truth she wanted to give. It wasn’t like she was going to lie, but there was a lot of variations of truth. “I wasn’t enjoying myself, so I left to get some fresh air, away from the sweaty dancers and the alcohol. Don’t look at me like that, I told you that people would be drinking.” Her dad had relaxed a minor amount at the comment, but not much.

“Ok, so you were at the party, you didn’t like it. Why didn’t you call me to come get you?”

Allison thought about it, “Who calls their dad to pick them up from a party. I was going to wait until someone I knew was leaving, and bum a ride.” He nodded, clearly not happy with her response, but chose to ignore it for now. “Well I left, and walked out to the road a bit, when I saw someone I knew.”

She was hoping to be able to gloss over that part, but when she took a breath, her dad was ready. “Who was it?”

“I’ll get to that in a minute.” She said, her mind was running ahead, the story slipping in and out of the truth, her calculations of what was enough truth were suddenly all thrown around and jumbled. “Well, it was Derek Hale.”

Her dad looked skeptical. “Why was Derek Hale at a party? A high school party?”

Allison smiled, “I asked him that, he said he was there to make sure that his pack wasn’t doing anything stupid, which I didn’t mention to him how Scott and Stiles were having a hand stand competition, but that didn’t seem like something that he would have cared about.” Her dad nodded, and Allison smiled again, this time because there was something inanely stupid about teenage boys at parties. And their stupid antics. At least Danny had joined in, although Scott still cheated.

“What did Derek say?”

Allison thought back, “he apologized.”

Sudden clarity filled her father’s face, and suddenly he was a hunter, “what did he say when he apologized?”

Derek might have gotten a pass from her father, but he wasn’t forgiven, “I think the apology was for my ears only, if you ever talk to him, not just about business, then I’m sure he’ll give you yours too. He really is sorry.”

Her father crumpled in front of her. He was back to a grieving father. “Ok, so he apologized, what happened after that?”

Allison breathed, she did it again because she was human, and humans needed to breathe. She was stalling. “I hit him. A lot.”

He smiled a small, sad smile, and added, “Did you knock him down?”

Allison shook her head, “I was crying at that point.”

“Oh, and you didn’t pull out your gun? I’m not sure if I’m proud of you or disappointed. It could go either way.”

Allison smiled a little bit. “I was tempted, but he didn’t do anything to put a human in danger, and I didn’t want to deal with Scott or Isaac being there too, not when I was crying.” She hadn’t thought about that last night, but it dissuaded her father’s trepidation, and so she continued, “Then I broke down completely, and he drove me home.”

“Is that when he gave you his coat?”

Oh yeah, the coat, “No. that was before I started crying.”

Hunter again, her father looked her in the eyes, “Why didn’t you walk away when you saw it was him?”

“I don’t know, it seemed like the logical thing to do, even then, but I didn’t want to be alone, and even if I don’t like him, he has never done anything to me that was cause for me to kill him, not even what happened to mom, not even when they were going after Lydia during the whole Kanima thing.”

Mr. Argent the hunter had agreed at the beginning of summer, Mr. Argent the husband had wanted to murder Derek where he stood, but had a moral code that wasn’t worth breaking too many times. Mr. Argent the father was currently wanting to hold his daughter proudly above all others and show the world that there was still some good in it, and wanting to kill Derek Hale for making his daughter cry. Yet she was somehow happy again, not the fake happy that she was before. She knew it. She saw it play off of her father’s face. And his next words were a surprise and a shock.

“Are you going to start hanging out with Scott again?”

Allison had to think about it. “No. I don’t think I am ready for that yet.”

She didn’t know exactly why that hurt less than normal. But it did. And there was no lie in it either. She wasn’t ready to hang out with Scott. He didn’t understand her anymore. But Derek did. And she had to return his jacket. 

“I don’t approve of how much you have been alone, and vulnerable might I add, with the Alpha.” He was both a hunter and her father at this point, a dangerous combination of over protectiveness that was bound to earn her a lecture and a slap on the wrist punishment, maybe. “But I can’t be mad at him, not really.”

It wasn’t what she was expecting. “You aren't mad about this?”

“No, why should I be? You ran into him twice, where you were least likely to see him, it’s not like he is stalking you, you found him both times, by accident. And you handled yourself like you should have. Besides, you keep standing your ground like this, and you might actually be ready to be the leader, you know, after you go to college and get a degree in something very difficult, like nuclear physics.”

Allison smiled, “can’t I just get my teaching degree, and maybe something stupid? Like English?”

“No.” and the conversation was over with a hug and another kiss on the forehead.

“I think I am going over to Lydia’s I should apologize. Maybe explain it all to her, I don’t know. I am in big trouble, remember?”

Her father smiled, clearly pleased with her choice of words, “Your friend happens to be the most interesting person I have ever met. Did you know that she has a 4.1 GPA?”

Allison rolled her eyes, “she is in almost every AP class in school this year. I am not surprised by anything I hear about Lydia Martin.”

Mr. Argent the father was smiling, “Well, at least you have a friend who gets mad at you, I don’t think you've ever had an angry friend before.”

It wasn’t a sore subject anymore, the moving. This was the permanent place, the non migratory pack that wasn’t going to ruin her life this year. He could pick on her choice of friends any day.

She got dressed, not bothering with washing up besides a quick splash of water on her face, a brush through her hair. It was easy now, the short cut curled easily enough, naturally enough. It bobbed as she walked; she was going to have to learn to ignore it. Her father wasn’t in the house, she figured she wouldn’t see him until later, so she put her newly acquired leather jacket on, it was heavy, but it went well with the baby-doll tee she was wearing.

Lydia was livid, well, she was livid until she saw the leather jacket, and then she was intrigued. “Who is he, and how do you know him?”

Allison smiled, it was half of the reason she was wearing the partially absconded jacket. Lydia listened with rapt attention as Allison divulged her pseudo-secret to her. It was like hanging a cat toy above a kitten. And Allison had to laugh out loud at that analogy. Lydia was definitely a cat, not a dog. “So, that’s what happened last night, sorry for baling on you.”

Lydia leveled a stare at her, calculating and calm. “You spent two hours outside, sitting on a Camreo hood, with a guy who quite frankly is hotter than anyone else in this town, and the most you can say is that you are sorry for baling on the party? Letting me worry about you for twenty minutes before I called your dad, to find you already home and safe? And all you can say is that you are sorry for baling on me?”

Allison was quiet for a second, Lydia was scary, “yes.”

“Did you kiss him?”

Allison’s eyes bugged out for a moment, “No, I was crying about my mom, why would I kiss him?”

Lydia shook her head, “do I have to tell you about exactly how hot he is? Again?”

***


	4. Small Issues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allison faces problems.

Sunday ended as subtly as it began, except that the shadow didn’t show up. And then Monday came and went, no incident. Tuesday was pretty good actually, and even Scott’s presence in AP Physics wasn’t enough to dampen her feeling of contentment, but she knew that sooner or later, she was going to have to deal with him, in a calm and civilized manner.

Lydia didn’t bring up Derek anymore, maybe because Allison had admitted that he was attractive, but that she was still into Scott, which she was, even if she had been disenchanted with him. She wondered again if she ever really loved him, or if it was that he loved her, and she wondered again how she could not love him, because she still felt it, under the hurt feelings, under the apathy that was somehow dissolving, there was love.

Derek’s jacket was slowly becoming her favorite accessory. She realized it when she took it off Wednesday and she had to spend her time getting all of her stuff out of the pockets. When he had first seen it, from across the hallway on Tuesday, Scott had tripped, almost fell on his face. Stiles hadn’t come and ask about it, so he might have asked Derek, somehow. Allison couldn’t be bothered; she was suddenly enjoying school, just a little bit. And yes, she was enjoying the envious looks on people’s faces when Lydia told them exactly where Allison’s jacket came from. Not that many people asked, to her face anyways.

Danny and Lydia were sitting down Thursday during lunch when Danny finally brought it up. She was waiting for it really, “So, if you are wearing the Alpha’s jacket, does that mean you two are dating now?”

Allison wasn’t prepared for it, “no, are you insane? I just like the thing. If he wants it back, he can come to my house and ask, or even text me, I’m sure he can get my number from people. It’s not like he doesn’t know how to use his phone.”

Danny looked over Allison’s shoulder, to where Scott was probably looking at him expectantly, Lydia had decided to sit next to her, so she couldn’t be sure, there was no double agent on her side, but Danny was clearly the double agent in this equation. She stared down at the salad that she was eating, picking at the little pieces of ham that suddenly offended her. She wanted ice cream. She knew that she was going to get it. Then she’d go home, with ice cream in a tub, and then she’d eat it after practice. Scott was a jerk. 

She walked into AP Physics with a bounce in her step, an extra bit of gloss on her lips, and the jacket on, because it would make him angry. She left after 7th period and laughed at something the guy she had to work with on a project said something slightly humorous, instead of just smiling, because Scott was walking the other way. She got to her car and drove to the nearest place that had cheese cake squares in their mix it yourself batches. She really should have been surprised, she really should have been, but instead, she was calm, and almost relieved.

 

“Hi.” She said, a smile teasing her lips. “How are you?”

Derek looked up from his ice cream, a dish of something with strawberries. “I’m fine, just wanted to have some ice cream, and since you are here, I assume you want the same.”

Allison didn’t think twice before sitting down and joining him at his table. “What did you get?”

“Strawberry cheese cake, but I was tempted to add gummy bears.”

Allison looked at him, a sense of wonder came over her, “You have a sweet tooth?”

Derek smiled, a small smile, but it was still there, “Kind of, I run a high metabolism, I can get away with a few bowls of ice cream.”

Allison giggled, which didn’t feel right, but was comfortable, “A day.”

So she and Derek ate ice cream, and when it was time for her to go, they said goodbye, and Allison was happy.

On Friday night, Lydia called. “Allison, Stiles was wondering if you and your dad were busy.”

Allison of course was not busy, “What’s up?”

Lydia cursed under her breath, “I was kind of hoping you guys were out of town, apparently there is a small disturbance, a few Omegas that aren’t passing through, nothing too dangerous, but somehow, I don’t believe that, especially if Stiles was told by a certain broody Hale that it would be a good idea to call me, to call you. He only wants you and your dad, and he asked that you bring wolfs bane. I am not a messenger girl, you owe me an ice cream date, and don’t act surprised that I found out about that, yet you still have his jacket… something is going on here, and I will find out what.”

“Where are they?” Allison was a hunter, and yeah, some werewolves were better than others, but they never called hunters. Lydia gave her coordinates, “Tell Stiles to call me directly next time, want to do lunch tomorrow?”

“Sounds good, have a decent night.”

Allison smiled, “I won’t, but thanks.”

Of course when she told her dad that there were more Omegas trespassing towards dangerous town boarders, the man wanted an entire contingent of hunters to deal with them. “It’ll be safer for everyone, I promise.”

She looked at him, “If they aren’t here for trouble, then hunters will kill them, and if they are here for trouble, then someone could get hurt. So we will go in, the two of us, you and your gun, me and my arrows. It’ll be a precision operation, and nobody will get hurt.”

When she wanted to get her way, Allison knew that the best way to do it was with logic. “You have a point, fine, get me a few rounds, we’ll leave in two minutes.” He walked up towards his room, “and bring that jacket, you’re going to return it.”

The aftermath was brutal. Allison had shot an omega full of arrows. And she was still trying to claw at Isaac’s throat. “Pack traitor!”

Isaac was trying to ignore her, in favor of healing from some sort of claw mark, or maybe it was a knife wound. “You don’t even have a pack, how can you call me a pack traitor.”

Allison chose to ignore them; instead she went to check on Stiles, “Hey, how are you?”

He was leaning against a tree, “I think I broke my everything.”

Allison smiled, “You have a cracked rib, my dad said he’d take you to the hospital to get you taped up. Don’t worry about it, it’s not life threatening. Trust me.”

Stiles looked up at her, “easy for you to say, you have a fancy bow, all I have is a cracked rib, and a broken everything else.”

Allison rolled her eyes, “If you want some weapon training ask Derek if he’d allow you to come practice with me, I’m always looking to one up people.”

She said it with a smile, a smile that wasn’t there a week ago, not there for too long now. She was used to the hollowness, she was used to the sarcasm, but this was different. This was nice.

She walked away, he was going to be fine, and she walked to her dad and Derek, “So, why did they start attacking?”

Derek looked up from his position over a small map, and a dead body. “I don’t know, apparently they were told that there was a small pack who had a weak Alpha and would be easy to take. Apparently they have been here for a few days, staying away from town, staying away from the woods, just watching. And apparently they used a human to gain intel on our location and our weak links. Do you have any idea who would have done that?”

Allison frowned, no she didn’t. She also didn’t know what he had meant by asking her if she knew anything. Of course she didn’t. “Listen, I’m not sure who would have said anything, but if you are implying that anyone here would mention it, you are wrong.”

Derek looked at her again, “No, I’m wondering if you know anyone who hates werewolves enough to try and kill a human.”

“Stiles?”

Her dad had been ahead of her, again. Was a little frustrating being so far behind. “They went after Stiles?” her eyes were wild, why hadn’t she killed the omega in this dark wooded corner? She didn’t know. Derek just nodded, “Well, you can’t count me or my dad, and my grandfather is dead. Do you think that maybe someone said something by accident, or maybe was tricked?”

Derek leveled a glare at her, “Maybe, but there aren’t that many people who are human and know about us.”

Stiles hobbled over, exaggerating the effort it took him, he was playing a martyr better than if he was facing lions and bears in the coliseum. “Maybe they didn’t ask about werewolves. Maybe they had your name, but they didn’t have anything else but Beacon Hills. Maybe they asked who had seen you around town, who you were with. Maybe it was a hunter. The long and short of it is this,” he paused, “We are ok, we made it through, and we will be vigilant for the next attack.”

Stiles words left no doubt that there would be another attack, but it also lead to another question, “where is Scott?” Allison asked.

Derek rolled his eyes, “he didn’t answer my call, it would have been over, and Stiles wouldn’t have called you if he had been here.”

Stiles looked at Derek, “I told you, he was with his dad, he couldn’t have come, he’s not in town more than likely. He had to travel 4 hours just to get there.”

Derek looked at Stiles, “he shouldn’t have left; he left you defenseless.”

Stiles shook his head, “I’m co-captain of the Beacon Hills’ Lacrosse team! I am not defenseless, they just caught me when I was busy.”

The snarl from the background was both angry and vengeful, “yeah, caught him with his pants down, he practically surrendered just so we would let him put his pants on. Didn’t realize that he text some bitch.”

Derek flashed red at her, she whimpered and was silent, but not for long, “What are we going to do with her,” her dad asked.

Derek was angry, Allison could see it. “I would normally either have killed her, or I would have chased her off my territory, but I can’t do either of those. Don’t you have something of a protocol for this sort of things?”

Chris nodded. “But I didn’t think you would approve of our procedure. We’ll take her to one of our outstations, keep her for a few days, tag her, then let her go somewhere in North Dakota. That’s Omega territory, if she survives long enough to get out, then some other pack might pick her up. We don’t deal with them; we just get rid of them.”

This was all news to Allison, Derek too, “It’s better than she deserves,” he said, leveling a glare at her, she was silent again, “but it’ll do.”   
Allison watched as Mr. Argent the Hunter and Derek Hale the Alpha put the Omega in the trunk of her father’s truck, and Stiles started complaining about riding with a complaining dog in the backseat. Derek gave him a look, but then her father pulled out a sleeping cap. It was silent for a few minutes. Derek looked at the scene in front of him. That’s when Allison remembered his leather jacket. She was wearing her olive green one, a Henley underneath.

“Hey, Derek? I have your jacket. Thanks for letting me borrow it.”

Derek looked at her for a second, leveling another glare at her, she was almost used to getting that look, after tonight. Suddenly she knew why Stiles had always complained. He was annoyed at not being able to do what he really wanted to. He didn’t want to be annoyed with his friends, he wanted to be friendly. But Scott and Stiles were not friendly. So here he was, formal Derek, and here she was, formal Allison. They were both faking it. It felt good to know.

“Yeah, thanks for returning it, it’s been getting colder out on patrol at night.”

Mr. Argent the hunter began rattling off coordinates and pack boundaries and schedules, but Stiles wasn’t having that. “You can talk about this stuff when I don’t need to go to the ER. Why don’t you guys go out for pancakes or something? That’ll be a good time to discuss this, don’t you think? Or you know, cell phones and e-mails are a thing.”

It effectively ended all conversations, and Derek and Isaac left. There was a short drive to the road, a longer drive to the hospital to drop off Stiles, and then an even longer drive to a warehouse. All the while, Allison was thinking about the need for formality. Was Derek just like her? Were they both hurting, filling a role they didn’t really want? She knew that he had lost his family, she also knew why he lost his family. Were the circumstances really that different?

She was lost in these thoughts as she ordered the hunters to help with their cargo, as they left to go home, she text Stiles, asking how he was, and when she read his reply about there being nothing wrong with him at all. She smiled and laughed at the stupidity of it all. There was no other recourse left. All of these years of her dad hating werewolves, and suddenly there was peace and problemless nights, and all it took was a lot of death.

***


	5. Conversations and Dances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allison is not unhappy, and Lydia wants a boyfriend (jacket).

Of course Allison went shopping with Lydia the next day. Lydia had too many questions, and Allison gave her all of the answers, “Why did Stiles text me?”

Allison couldn’t laugh hard enough, “He was taken by the Omegas and then he sent you the SOS. Do you two have a system in case something horrible goes down?”

Lydia smiled, “Danny created an app for the three of us, since we almost never hang out in the same place without at least one werewolf, then we end up getting an SOS with detailed instructions. And GPS updates every few minutes. That was Stile’s idea. The boy can think sometimes.”

All Allison could do was smile, it was a brilliant plan. “So, what exactly are you looking for?”

Lydia smiled, “I am looking for a boyfriend jacket. Mind you, I’ll have to find a boyfriend to fit into the thing, but that won’t be too difficult.”

Allison scowled, “What is a boyfriend jacket exactly?”

Lydia giggled a little, “Well, if you are going to be obtuse, I guess I’ll lay it out for you. When you get cold, a boyfriend is obligated to give you his jacket, his hoodie or a blanket. It is the law of dating. Of course, if he has none of these things, there is always cuddling. But the boyfriend jacket has somehow become a popular look this last week or so, I personally blame you. You wore that too big for you jacket for too long, it made the rest of the girls jealous. Some even went so far as to buy a men’s jacket just for the fun of it.

“Speaking of, I finally figured it out.” Lydia continued, “You aren’t dating Derek, you are just using him for his body, I don’t blame you. But did he have to let you take his jacket every night? That’s just over kill, don’t you think?”

Allison hadn’t talked at all, and she was defiantly not mentioning that Lydia was doing some buying of a man’s jacket of her own. Well, she was, but she was also planning on giving it to a boy. “Listen, me and Derek, there is nothing going on there. I promise. It was just that one night, at the party. That’s really the only time I saw him.”

Lydia looked over the leather in her hand, “And the ice cream?”

Her eyebrows were perfectly suited to her face, and they arched a bit too well, “well, if I ran into him at the ice cream shop, that’s not my fault.”

Lydia looked at her disbelieving, “you expect me to believe that you just happened to run into Derek Hale at an ice cream shop? And that you just happened to sit with him and then sit with him for up to thirty minutes just eating ice cream and exchanging looks and smiles?”

Allison was a bit flustered, “How did you know what we did?”

Of course Lydia waved off her question, “that’s not important, the important question here is exactly what is going on between you two, and why I bother being friends with you if you can’t at least be honest with me, especially after last year, all the lies. I still can’t believe you would lie to me still. I thought you liked me Allison, I really thought you did.”

Allison’s eyes were wide, her mouth slack, “Have you been hanging out with Stiles more than anyone else lately?”

Lydia narrowed her eyes, “So what if I have been?”

Allison smiled, “I can tell.”

Of course Lydia didn’t take that well, but she still noticed that Lydia was paying for a large but slim cut leather jacket. Lydia was oblivious to the questioning gazes Allison was trying to give to her. That’s when they ran into Derek. At the mall. Because that was normal.

Lydia’s jaw was slack, Allison was a bit bemused, hoping that he hadn’t heard a word that they had said, “Hello, how are you?”

Allison knew the question was to her, that Derek just didn’t want to acknowledge Lydia, felt embarrassed that he had tried to harm her, felt guilt, especially after she had saved everyone’s lives. “I’m fine, how are you?”

Derek’s reply was a shrug, holding up a shopping bag from a small suit store, “I have to buy dressier clothes apparently, I have to try and sneak into homecoming. Or rather, I have to try and not look like I am going to murder people at homecoming. That’s what Stiles said. So no black. I just got a tie. I don’t like it though, but it was the only non-black thing they had really.”

Lydia was suddenly in her element, she reached for the bag, and before Derek said anything, she was looking over the tie and the matching cuff links. “Derek, you can’t wear this, you don’t look good in this shade of yellow. If it was a gold, you might have gotten away with it. And a black suit would look very good on you, regardless of what Stiles says. Allison, come on, we have a fashion intervention to take care of, starting with returning this tie.”

The hours at the mall were easy. Derek grumbled about trying on suits, but he looked pleased when the suit that he had chosen, a charcoal grey with a dark blue shirt to go under it, no tie, because this was a mostly formal dance, not the prom, was actually chosen. “Do you really think no tie is a good thing?”

Allison couldn’t help but notice how the shirt did bring out the brown in his eyes, and how the suit looked very appealing. There was a slight second when she was transfixed at his chest; there was the little dip that all guys had where his two clavicles met. It was a very comfortable spot. “Yeah, I think you can pull it off. Exactly why are you going to be there?”

Derek shook his head, “It happens to be on the night of the full moon, and were as I know that Scott and Isaac will be fine, like they always are, Stiles doesn’t want them to shift, so I have to be there in case something starts happening. Apparently I am being a chaperone.”

Lydia laughed, “Leave it to Stiles to get you to do something completely embarrassing. Well, at least you’ll look good. I’m sure a few teachers and lots of girls will want to dance with you. No matter how much you glare at them, they won’t stop.”

Derek looked at Allison, she wasn’t going to deny it. So Derek started to grumble again, “Maybe a t-shirt and jeans would be better.”

Allison laughed, “The only way people wouldn’t want to dance with you is if you were sporting your mutton chops.”

He glared at her, of course she had seen him in his Beta mode, even as an Alpha, he liked his Beta mode. It felt comfortable. He could be an Alpha later. She knew that. But here she was, laughing about how unnatural he was, and it felt natural. “Don’t worry, just sit with Danny and his boyfriend at the cool kids table, you’ll get less girls talking to you then.”

Lydia shook her head, “not true, they’ll attack him like he was tequila and they were recovering alcoholics. Sorry Derek, but that’s the best you can do, you know, being you.” She said it with a casual enough tone, and she pointed at him, showcasing his muscles under layers of clothing, his jaw line that was both chiseled and soft. And he blushed, just a bit.

The night of the dance, Allison and Lydia showed up half an hour after it was supposed to have started. The gym looked really boring. The music was a bit too soft, and the punch on the side was looking like it was something out of aisle 3. It was perfectly horrible. But that’s when Derek walked out from behind a pillar of balloons, looking like he was going to vomit if he really had to be there that long.

Lydia was a vision in a dark green sequined thing, and all eyes were on her. But Allison was wearing a dark blue satin dress, short, but not too short. She knew she looked just as good tonight, even if she was being subtle. Lydia had called her “huntress chic” whatever that meant.

The dance was going on, rowdy teens excited after they had won their Lacrosse skirmish the day before, they were going a bit insane really. And teachers were noticeably looking glum, looking away from all of it. But Derek was fitting in, with the chaperones at least. Lydia went off to find Danny and Stiles, who had agreed that tonight was going to be a friend’s only occasion, but then Scott showed up, looking like he had just gotten off his bike, which he probably did.

Derek shot him a look, which Allison noticed as she put a cookie on a napkin, “Hey,” he said, low, soft, lovingly. Had she really ignored him all this time? How could she? “How is it going?”

Allison turned enough to see him, to also see Derek coming up slowly, waiting for some sign of annoyance, or maybe control loss, either way it probably would have ended badly for Scott. “I’m doing alright, just bored. You’d think that nobody would throw dances anymore. I mean, this town has had a lot of deaths in it over the last few months. And other problems too. Why have dances?

Scott looked a bit taken aback for a second. “Because it is normal.”

It was a simple enough answer. Normal. “We aren’t normal anymore. I don’t think I belong here. If it wasn’t for my dad saying I had to be here, and Lydia pulling me out the door, I wouldn’t have come at all.”

Scott looked at her napkin, “You want some punch?”

Allison sighed, “Yeah.”

Derek walked away, to go stalk some other nervous couple, who happened to be verging into dangerous waters by offending him somehow.

The dance was ok, after all. Allison danced with Scott for a slow song, he hadn’t spoken a word, just looked at her. Smiled too many times. But yeah, Allison missed him. Stiles was a fun dance partner, he didn’t ask for a slow dance, just a fast one, and he sang the entire time, it was kind of funny to watch him be uncoordinated outside of a combat zone. Lydia had offered her a slow dance, but she was stolen by Scott before she got the chance to actually force Allison on the floor. Allison was grateful. But then it was announced that it was the last song of the night.

She had danced with Scott twice, she had danced with Danny and Stiles once each. There was no one else to dance with, because Isaac was dancing with Lydia, and Scott should not be looking at her expectantly like that. She was looking around at the couples being paired together; they were hugging close, kissing. It was the end of the night, and those that weren’t dating before now, well they were dating now. Danny was asked by a sophomore to dance, which he took, which surprised Allison a little, she didn’t think that Danny knew who the guy was, but he might have. Then the music was starting, and Scott was looking at her more now.

“Would you like to dance?”

It was a deep voice, it was curt, it was gravel and dirt in a cut, and it was soothing water cleaning it all up. “Yes. I would.”

Allison allowed herself to just dance, no expectation of friendship or normalcy here. She just twirled with her partner. They didn’t look into each other’s eyes, they didn’t talk, they just danced. It was easy. Derek ended the dance as the music wound down. He released her carefully, allowing her to either pull away or to keep touching. She smiled into his eyes, “thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

It wasn’t the most romantic dance, but it felt like the best dance of the night.

***


	6. Bucking Goads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allison starts breaking out of her normal feelings, by having feelings.  
> Lydia also has feelings.  
> So does Derek... and he is kind of funny.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goads are usually used in cattle ranching, some of them are mean, and have sharp ends that make the cattle cry. They are used to make them go one way or the other. Kind of sad really. any time an animal bucks against them they are reminded to go the other way...  
> These are all emotional goads, the stuff Allison is dealing with.

They were sitting around on couches, Allison was looking directly at the object in her had. “I don’t think I can do this.”

Scott smiled, “You have to, you made the rules, no backing down.”

“Fine!”

She got up, did a handstand, a quick back flip and then stated in a very serious voice, “What do you mean I got silver!?”

Everyone busted out laughing, including her dad, who was pointedly not playing the game, and who was sitting with a cup of coffee in the kitchen with Mrs. McCall. Derek was in neither location, but that wasn’t that upsetting, he didn’t feel like he belonged, Allison understood.

Lydia was up next, she rolled the dice, “I don’t want another red space!”

Everyone groaned, Stiles was the king of red spaces.

The game went on for the next forty to fifty minutes, and soon as it was done, after Stiles won, everyone was pretending like this wasn’t awkward, and wanted to prolong this. In the end, it was Mrs. McCall who saved them all; she yawned over her coffee and asked Scott to drive her home. Allison was still wired, she had cooked and cleaned and organized all of the house for the four hours that they would be here, which was actually more like 3 hours, but it was still dinner and a board game, and conversation that was neither too heavy or too light. It was peaceful and adequately awkward. And Scott wasn’t being a jerk anymore.

Her father came out from the kitchen when Isaac left, he was the last one, he had to discuss something with Lydia, and Allison had roped him into helping her put the table back in the living room’s center. “That went better than I expected. I was hoping you’d pull out your crossbow at least once, if for nothing else than a bit of a remake of William Tell.”

Allison smiled, “yeah, but that would have been awkward, as the only person I could actually take a shot at would have been Mrs. McCall, and I am not shooting an arrow at her, ever. I like her.”

Her father smiled, “I do too, you’d think that raising a werewolf for a son would have made her a little more insane, but she is remarkably stoic. Takes it all rather well.”

Allison nodded, “were you trying to see if she was being tortured every full moon? Or was that just to see if she was coping well?”

Her father didn’t answer, “I just was curious on how she was coping with it, I mean, I have to cope with a daughter who outranks me, on paper, it’s kind of hard sometimes.”

He smirked, she smirked. They did the dishes together, it was a peaceful Saturday night.

There was a shadow outside her window. It wasn’t trying to sneak around anymore. It was just there, existing. It had been there every night this week. A shadow of a head, maybe some shoulders, it would stay for ten minutes, maybe twenty if she was really still and quiet. Then it would go away. Some nights, she thought it was Scott. He was always doing it, why wouldn’t it be Scott? But some nights, and she couldn’t be sure without seeing it longer, some nights she thought it might have been Derek. Broader shoulders, a bigger frame. It might have been Derek. She wasn’t sure which one she was hurting more over.

The next day was Sunday, a monotone day that should have just been called Boring, because that was the day that she had nothing to do. “Dad, is there some way we can just go do something? I’m bored.”

He smiled at her, “if you are bored enough to hang out with your old man, you are too bored, what do you have in mind?”

They ended up going to a rundown arcade in town, somewhere Stiles had mentioned to her. They took turns beating the high scores on the shooter games, laughing at the depictions of werewolves, but they were having fun. Her dad even put his initials down as ASS for one of the games. She couldn’t help but be happy. They hadn’t felt like this, this easy peaceful feeling, in forever. They ordered a pizza, ate it slowly, talked about school and feelings. Her father promised not to be so hard on her anymore, to try and understand it all.

“Allison?”

They were driving home, it was just getting dark outside, “Yeah dad?”

“When are you going to tell me what is going on?”

Allison sighed, “I don’t have anything going on. I swear.”

Her dad looked away from the road for a second, “Why don’t you want to tell me?”

She shook her head, “I honestly have nothing to tell you, there is very little that I have kept secret in my life, except for when I had my period, although, you might have noticed.”

The desired effect, a cringe, “Yes, I did, especially when you left the empty box of tampons out with a note that said you needed more. You’re welcome by the way. But seriously, I can handle it, the two of you, together. I can. I just want to know ok?”

She wasn’t with anyone to be a two of anything, “I’m not with anyone dad.”

They were pulling into the drive, “You can’t deny that you are happier lately, and if he has anything to do with it, then whatever you two are or aren’t doing, well, just don’t let it get too crazy. I love you, you are my world, just, keep me in it ok?”

Allison shook her head, “Dad, I am not with anyone. And you are in it. I promise. And if I have my way, you always will be.”

He smiled down at her, “You see, right there is why you aren’t really leading right now, your way would probably have me making pottery and selling on the side of the highway.”

Allison laughed, “I am not a hippie!”

Her dad reached over, it looked like a hug, but then he just plucked at the shoulders of her shirt, “Tie-dye shirts.”

He might have had a point.

Wednesday came, school wasn’t horribly dull anymore. She had a wider circle of friends, some of whom were actually not so horrible anymore. Scott was respectfully keeping his distance, except for AP Physics and lunch, when he would chat with everyone, not bothering to look at Allison any more or less than 3 times a minute, just to make sure she was there. Allison couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt. He was trying. Was she trying? She didn’t know. But Wednesday afternoon, she was not happy.

“Lydia, want to come to the burger joint with me?”

Lydia looked at her, “are you sure you want me there?”

Allison looked confused, she was sure of it, “Why would I ask you if I didn’t want you to come.”

“Because,” Lydia started, “You might have made plans with a certain person, the inventor of the boyfriend jacket, which by the way I am still mad at you for. Although, I do have my own, just in case.”

Allison laughed, “I saw Stiles wearing it yesterday.”

Lydia looked Allison in the eye, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Allison shook her head, but then again, she couldn’t do much else, both girls drove separately to the burger shop. There was no shiny black Camaro, no angry eyebrows furrowing at the sight of people, so there was no reason for Allison to be anxious. There was no deputy in a booth, nobody looked familiar, so why was she looking around so much?

They ordered, Allison finally getting her strawberry malt. Lydia ordered a basket of fries, they walked to the back, where Allison knew he wouldn't be. Except, there he was.

“Hi.”

Lydia spoke first, “Hey Derek, fancy running into you here. Come here often?”

There were two pointed stares directed at Allison, she could feel them, but instead of acknowledging either one, she put the number on the table, and scooted into the corner of the booth. “Hey, Derek. How are you?”

Derek smiled a little bit, his burger halfway to his mouth, “good, just getting a late lunch, how are you?”

Allison smiled back, “Hungry. The cafeteria food isn’t that filling, especially because I have training every day after school.”

Derek nodded, “How is school going? Isaac doesn’t ever want to talk about it. Except for Lacrosse practice. And I don’t ask Scott or Stiles.”

Lydia answered, “Stiles is trying to beat my GPA, but he can’t.”

Derek looked slightly amused, “How is he trying to beat your GPA exactly?”

Lydia shook her head, “he’s actually studying. I mean seriously, we have discussed this at length, no matter how many A’s and A+’s he gets, he can’t match my GPA unless he is taking three extra credits, which I know he isn’t.”

Derek smiled, “Well, Ms. Martin, I congratulate you on beating yet another man into submission.”

Allison looked up to the ceiling, which was probably going to catch fire when Lydia’s wrath broke from what Derek just said. “Why thank you, Mr. Hale.”

Allison looked down, Lydia didn't look fake. She was genuinely smiling at the man. That’s when she knew, something here was wrong.

The next silence was filled by Lydia, “How is that boy doing?”

Derek shook his head, but smiled, ever so slightly, “You mean, besides dead?”

Lydia rolled her eyes, so Derek continued, “He’s fine, he just got accepted into another pack. He wanted me to tell you that he does miss you, but that you should always remember that he is keeping your key, and that you should get another key. Whatever that meant.”

Lydia smiled, “He’s so stupid, I don’t know why I stayed with him.” Allison wasn’t trying to see the moisture in her eyes, she was going to ignore it, but it was there.

 

“He said you would say that.”

“He knows me well. But you’re right, I should get another key. Next time you howl at him, tell him I will keep his key forever, OK?”

Derek nodded. Had they been doing this often? Was this something that Lydia and Derek had? If so, why hadn’t she known about this? She chose this point to address something else. “So I think I should have Stiles do some training.”

Derek looked slightly put off. “Why?”

Allison looked at Derek, “Because sometimes people get kidnapped, and Stiles is lucky.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “That is one of the most kidnapped people in the entire known universe.”

Lydia smiles. She had never been kidnapped, bitten once, put through a series of hallucinations and raising the dead once, but never kidnapped. For once she was happy.

“I think you should do it, Allison, what’s the worst that could happen?” she looked pointedly at Derek, “he isn’t the damsel in distress? He doesn’t need saving just one time?”

Derek doesn’t answer, “I gotta go, I need to go pick up a shipment from the hardware store, and you have practice in twenty minutes. You are going to be late.”

The reminder that time had steady flowed past them as they munched on rapidly cooling fries suddenly felt strange. Why did she need practice? She needed to have normalcy. “I cancelled practice, one of the perks of outranking your dad. I’ll come with you and we can do something about the hardware store. Talk to you later Lyds.”

Lydia hadn’t excused herself yet, but she took Allison’s dismissal as a good sign, and walked off with a short goodbye and a wave of the hand.

***


	7. Dreams and reality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allison is having a really weird dream... Then life gets too real.

“Allison?”

She turned away from the sound of the voice, “No. too early.”

She heard the chuckle. “Wake up. You promised me we would go today, and this one wouldn’t let me forget.”

There was a grunt from somewhere behind it all. “let’s just go.”

There was a lot happening right now. She was in bed. Lydia was shaking her arm. There were balloons all over her bedroom. Somewhere in the background Peter was making out with her dad, which was wrong, but somehow they didn’t seem to be noticed by anyone else. Derek was wearing hot pink tight pants and a baby-doll tee that said, “Kill me now” in black letters. It looked good on him. Scott was swimming in the ocean outside her bedroom window. Isaac happened to be hanging like a bat from the ceiling. It was defiantly strange.

A voice pulled her out of her strange dream, “Allison, we have to go, come on.”

It was a direct order, and she was ready for it. They had been training for this to eventually happen. She took the cursory two minutes that it should have to get dressed up fully for whatever threat might have been barging into town. Then she grabbed her pack and was in the garage waiting for her dad to come. She wasn’t expecting him to be serious, she wasn’t expecting him to have guns ready for them, “There was an attack, not sure what it is, but I got the call from one of our guys down at the sheriff’s department. He has them all going the wrong way. You ready kid?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be. What could be so bad?”

Mr. Argent the hunter looked at his daughter, “it killed six people, they were all ex-military. Two of them discharged a weapon.”

Allison thought about it. “Is this a training exercise, or is this a joke?”

Her father looked at her for a minute, “It’s not a joke, and this isn’t a training exercise. I want you to promise me that if you can, you will get away, you can always fight it another day, got me kiddo?”

She really did hate her dad calling her a kid. “We should call Derek.”

Her dad might have squinted his eyes a bit, “Why?”

Allison honestly thought that they had gotten over this. “He’s a werewolf, and if he isn’t already tracking the thing, I’d be surprised.”

Her father conceded, so she pressed the screen until the phone started ringing. “Yes?”

Allison took on a strong but joking voice, “Any chance you happen to be tracking down a murderer right now?”

She could feel his eyes rolling as he answered, “What’s it to you? If I am?”

She laughed a short huff of air, “I’m about to come through with some aconite, so I would prefer to get my targets right, meet us on the side of the road where the trail starts, me and my dad will be there soon, we’ll be a hundred feet down. On the right, got it?”

Derek didn’t like taking orders from hunters. But he agreed. Was it because she had called him, had asked? Was it because they were friends? She hoped it was the latter, but wasn’t going to tell anyone that, least of all Lydia.

Derek was waiting a bit more than a hundred yards in front of the car, he looked broody. Allison smiled a little bit. “Don’t look so mad, you’re fine.”

Her father looked at her funny, but ignored it; he knew better than her exactly how good an alpha’s ears were. Mr. Argent slowed down enough for Derek to open the door, then they were off again before he was really in. If that upset Derek he didn’t mention it. There was a tense silence, something that wasn’t exactly right, not after all that happened. Not now.

“Exactly what are we hunting?” she finally asked the brooding man in the back.

A short time later, they saw the crime scene and Allison almost had to look away, but she couldn’t look weak in front of Derek, he had already seen that too much.

“I don’t know, but it smells human.”

Mr. Argent the hunter swore.

Allison looked confused.

Derek looked broody.

He had looked broody in her dream, wearing that too tight baby doll tee.

This was strange.

They were in the woods now, minutes or hours could have passed, and all that Derek was doing was brooding. They were silent. They were uncomfortably silent. There was something dangerous in the woods, and it was human. Or smelled like one. Her dad was tense, he would be until they caught it. There had been a few bare foot prints here and there, in the mud, too easy to find. The person was either baiting them in, or they were really stupid. Having six dead bodies out on the road, Allison was guessing that they were being baited, and she wasn’t sure if that knowledge was more or less comforting.

“Were we already past this point? Like ten times?” Mr. Argent the hunter asked.

“Yes.” Derek answered, as if that was the only thing that needed to be said, because they weren’t hunting a murderer or anything like that.

“Dad,” she said it with a little bit of authority, she was trying to show off, “Give me your map.”

She took out her cell, put the map on the ground, and started looking up her GPS app that Danny had gotten to her. She tracked their progress, every few minutes. It had kept a running record. The dots on the map started to make some sense, to someone, but they weren’t making any sense to them. They looked like a circle, slowly folding in on itself here, expanding there. She couldn’t see the pattern.

“What is that?” Mr. Argent asked, “It looks like a summoning circle, but you have to draw those in blood.”

A small voice behind them answered, “And who said I had to draw it in blood, who said that the monster I wanted here wasn’t already summoned?”

Allison and her dad were both aiming at the voice, a void space of nothing appeared before their eyes. “Why would I show myself, I don’t work like that, I never have. I try using others to do my job. It’s why I have stayed alive for so long, when so many others have died. It’s why I am here really, to finish the job that I had started so many years ago.”

Sudden light filled all of their vision. Flames leapt up and touched their clothing, she felt its heat, and yet she wasn’t burning. She didn’t even have time to think. She knew that soon she would be burning, and then they’d be dead. She could tell that Derek was blinded, she just knew it. She also saw the shadow that hadn’t been there before, the slender shadow, and she aimed and shot.

“Bitch.”

It was the voice, but now it wasn’t coming from the wrong place, it was still a little louder than it should have been, but it was coming from the source. The flames went down, there was a sudden confusion. A woman, a young woman with curly black hair and vibrant green eyes was sneering at Allison, looking like she was about to start crying. Allison saw her arm clutching her side. The bullet must have hit her in the side, somewhere below the ribs. That’s where the hand was.

Derek was still blind, but he heard her, and so he lunged, there was a short shuffle, and then Derek stood, his face angry, but still human, the woman unconscious, and there was blood running from her lip. Derek looked back to Allison, she saw a look that had never appeared on his face before, it was frightened.

“Allison?” Derek asked.

“Yeah?”

“Where are you?”

Allison looked at Derek for a second, a second of confusion, and then she realized the truth. Derek wasn’t looking at her, he wasn’t looking at her at all. He was looking to the left of where she was.

“Derek, what’s wrong” she said, she hadn’t been able to understand what was going on. There was a stop on her thoughts, they wouldn’t be real, no, she couldn’t allow that.

“I can’t see.”

It was suddenly the saddest thing in the world. Derek wasn’t her favorite person in the universe, but lately she had thought of him as a potential friend, a person who knew her inside and out, but who hadn’t known anything about her. She suddenly realized that this was bigger than she could handle. She started to hyperventilate. She tried to keep her voice to herself. A groan from her left side made her look away from the Alpha.

She looked down, her dad was burned, “shoot, Derek, my dad’s hurt.”

She saw the burn marks on him, they weren’t too bad, but he was unconscious, “I can carry him. You’ll have to lead me.”

 

“What are we going to do about the woman I shot?”

She could see Derek’s sightless eyes rolling, “Call a hunter, or Scott, either way, you have people who can be here in a few minutes to either kill her or keep her unconscious for long enough that we can figure out what to do with her.”

Calling Scott sounded like a chore. A chore she would rather ignore. Allison the huntress was going to do something stupid, something very stupid, she dialed a number that she knew that she shouldn’t have, then told the person to wait, dialed another number, and connected the calls, “Ok, this is Allison Argent, and I have a job for you to take care of.”

She explained the situation, telling the two of them that she was not injured that she had to take her dad to the hospital, that there was a woman that needed to be taken care of and incapacitated, and that she wanted them both to watch her until she could attend to the problem. “You need to get here soon, I need to go to the hospital, I’m sending GPS coordinates now.”

The touch of a button sent the text, and one of the lines went dead.

“What the hell Allison, can’t you call anyone else to do this?”

Allison smiled, a little small smile, “Stiles, if there was anyone I trusted more than you to keep a woman alive for me, I would have called him, well I would have called Scott, but he doesn’t have the patience to do what is necessary, you’ll be working with one of our medics, so you’ll be fine.”

“Fine, I’ll be there in twelve. You get your dad to the hospital. Got it?”

Allison smiled a little bit more, he was right, she had more important things to be doing, “Yes sir.”

Derek was already by her, finding his way slowly but surely, and soon as she hung up the phone, he started to sniff the air, sniffing Allison. “I can’t stand this.”

He was more broody, but he had a calm about him. She wondered how he did it. “I know, we’ll get my dad to the hospital, and we’ll get you to Deaton.”

Derek shook his head, “No, I can’t stand that you called Stiles, I have been trying to avoid calling him, he’s been really angry lately. I don’t know why.”

Allison knew, “he’s just having a rough time. He lost to a guy who ran halfway across the country.”

Derek frowned. “I guess. Let’s go.”

She helped him pick up her dad, slowly and calmer than she would have been had he not been there. This was supposed to have been easy. What was that woman? Why was she hunting them? What was going on? “Derek?”

She was holding on to his arm while he carried her father, limp and unconscious, “Yeah?”

“Thanks, for coming.”

Derek was silent.

“Thanks for being there for me, always.”

Derek was silent; his eyes were closed now, probably because it made him feel better than having open eyes, blind eyes. Allison felt her throat tighten.

“I shouldn’t have called you. I’m sorry.”

Derek laughed, “If you hadn’t called me, I couldn’t have found my way out of these woods, and that bitch would have gotten me. You know you saved my life right?”

Allison almost stopped in her tracks, but she knew she needed to keep going, her dad was groaning more now, like he was in a bad dream. “I saved your ass, didn’t I?”

She couldn’t see his eyes, even if he had them open, but she knew he was rolling them.

***


	8. Hospitable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All the world is going to hell, and some monsters aren't easily found.

Chapter 8

The hospital was hell. There were no other words. Derek had finally broken down a bit, calling Isaac. They were sitting on a bed, Mrs. McCall questioning Derek kindly, but expecting the truth. Her dad was on an IV Drip. He wasn’t that badly burned, but he had passed out, and he was groaning. Deaton showed up earlier, checked out Derek without raising suspicions and then looked in on Mr. Argent. He spent some time with her dad, looking at the way his skin was grooved, trying to figure out something. He left looking much more thoughtful than she had seen him in a while.

“Derek?” she was across the way, not moving from the bedside in the ER. Derek nodded, a sure sign that he was listening to her, she had to think again exactly how to phrase the question, to make sure that it was a yes or no answer. “Are you ok?”

He started to shake his head yes, but she knew he meant no. “Don’t lie to me.”

So he didn’t. He stopped his head where it was then dropped it. He hesitated, then shook his head no. Allison’s breath hitched. He hadn’t realized that the truth would be so heavy. “I need to go deal with that woman who did this. When I figure out why she did this, I’ll let you know. Isaac,” a head nod was her only clue he heard her, he was looking at Derek, nothing else. “Are you going to stay here with him?”

Another nod and she left. She drove out to the warehouse, seeing Stile’s blue Jeep not only caused her to smile, but also made her laugh a bit. It looked wrong there. She would have to talk about that to her dad, when he woke up. Maybe they needed an actual plant, or a real warehouse. Either would have been less conspicuous, until there was blood all over.

“And there will be blood,” she said to no one.

The book could have ended here, if this were a book. It was such a Scott thing to think. She worried for a second, then reminded herself that this wasn’t about Scott. This was about a hunter. A hunter who happened to be her father. And a man she was just getting to know better. There had been texts. Brief conversations that suddenly seemed so important, and they were going away forever now. She was angry.

“Is she awake?” she asked the hunter.

Stiles looked up from where he was sitting on the chair. His legs were in a better position to ride on a saddle. “Not yet.”

She looked at the hunter; he was impassive, not paying any attention to anything other than his cell phone. She was upset. She was livid. So she broke his phone. “Next time, you’ll remember to pay attention to your job. Now leave, or I will break whatever else seems to offend me tonight.”

She had needed an excuse to show her power, her father gave her small disciplinary meetings as a way to show that she was really in charge, but tonight, everything having happened, she was more in charge than ever. The hunter stilled outside the door, looking back for a second, “I said leave.” Allison said, not looking back, “or do you not know how to take a direct order?”

Her voice was sharp, a knife cutting through her prey. No, an arrow piercing all that stood between it and the target. And right now, the man was standing between the woman; a dangerous place to be.

The door closed, and Allison let out a breath. “I hate this job, I do.”

Stiles smiled at her, “you know you are scary, right?”

Allison smiled back, “thank you, I always knew I was, but it feels good to hear sometimes.”

Stiles looked at her, “you are hanging out with Lydia too much.”

She shook her head, “what did you two do while I was away?”

Stiles rolled his eyes, they were sleep deprived, “I was looking on my phone at the PDF version of the newly translated Bestiary. And thinking about what happened. Which you still need to fill in some gaps for me.”

Allison had called Stiles for a reason, he was a thinker, even if he didn’t always show it. “Any idea what she is?” the nod was her only answer, “mind sharing that with me?”

Stiles looked at her, then at the woman. “She’s human.”

Allison frowned, “I knew that, but exactly how did she kill six men and not only start a fire from nothing? She was drawing a summoning circle, whatever that is. So please, explain.”

Stiles shook his head, “No, I don’t think you understand. That wasn’t her, here,” he said, pulling himself off of the chair, “right here on her wrist, there is a bite mark, it’s human too, or it would look like a human had bitten her, if it wasn’t for the fact that it healed black. I read up on that one time, so I had an idea where to start looking. It says that poltergeists are able to take over people, and that they feed on their blood, much like Vampire legends. So this woman is human, she is like a tool, used for whatever reason, to try and kill someone, I am guessing it was Derek. But I don’t know why, and Poltergeists are impossible to track.”

Allison nodded her head, “Do we know who she is?”

Stiles nodded, “yeah, she’s lived down the road from me since I was a kid, she just moved out, got her own place, has a boyfriend. You know? She’s normal.”

Allison looked over the body of the woman in front of them. Stiles had taken off his usual flannel shirt, putting over her limp form. She was older than him, for sure. “She was your babysitter.”

Stiles looked up at Allison, “Yeah.”

Allison took everything into consideration. “I have to make a phone call, but untie her, and then we’ll get her to the hospital.”

Stiles let out a small sigh, a breath, and moved to untie the woman. Allison’s phone call was unpleasant, but necessary. “Did they find any fingerprints?”

The voice on the other end of the line answered, respectfully, “no, there was nothing there linking this to anything more than a brutal crime scene. The police are tracking down a lead, but the Alpha was in the hospital, so they aren’t worried about him.”

Allison winced, yes, Derek was in the Hospital. This night was continuing to get better. “Stay the course, and don’t give the police any leads, I need to confer with a few other people before we can decide what to do.”

“Yes, ma’am. I will be going off duty in twenty minutes, if you need me.”

Allison didn’t bother to say goodbye as she hung up the phone. “We need to make a new story, right now.”

Stiles was quick, “You were coming over to my house, to sleep over. You didn’t want to be at your place. And Lydia was asleep, but I replied to your text. Sound good?”

Allison smiled, he was quick. “And that’s when I saw the big burly man with the gun running away from the woman as she was falling. And I called you and had you come help me patch her up. Good thing we both know first aid.”

Stiles shook his head, “the bullet wound isn’t there, she has a bit of a gunshot wound, but it looks like it is a scar already.”

Allison thought, “so she was jogging and I hit her with my car?”

Stiles shook his head, “I was coming to pick you up from where you parked your car on the side of the road, and we heard a scream, or rather, a crash. I’ll call Isaac, he’ll throw some stuff around inside of her apartment, it is close enough to the hospital to make it sound believable.”

Allison nodded. Stiles Stalinski was a thinker.

Their story was gulped down by the Sherrif’s department, even if Mr. Stalinski was looking vaguely suspicious of his son. But Allison was a good liar. Her dad would have been proud. “This is a bad night to be out. I don’t know if you heard Allison but some strange things have been happening all over town. Besides your family and Derek Hale getting into a camping accident,” Allison tried to go with it as best she could, so she didn’t comment, but Stiles shot her a look, “there has been a mass killing downtown. We have no leads. I’m just surprised that you two didn’t get into anymore trouble. I mean, if it was a full moon, I’d be worried that the town was going looney or something.”

Stiles appropriately smiled and laughed at his dad’s joke. And he was suddenly really happy that everyone was going to be ok, or rather mostly ok. Nobody but Isaac and Allison knew about Derek, so Stile’s was blissfully unaware of what tomorrow might bring. Allison on the other hand, couldn’t help but be wary. If the other packs had heard that the Beacon Hill’s Pack was weak, what would they think when their Alpha was blind?


	9. Uncoverable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Argent the "something" wakes up.
> 
> Things get stirred up and resolved.
> 
> Allison can't decide what anything means.

She was proud to say that she was sitting by the bed when he woke up. “Hey, sleepy head, nice of you to rejoin us.”

Her father groaned, “How long have I been out?”

Allison tried to remember the time that it had been, but couldn’t. “I don’t know. All I know is that it is half past two, and I am not sure how to proceed with an insubordination case that I have to deal with.”

He smiled, “did you pull rank on someone?”

Allison smiled, a little guilty, but very amused, “Yes, I did. I broke someone’s phone.”

Her dad groaned again, this time a much more annoyed sound, “Not Simmons? You called Simmons? Well, did you at least send someone else in there with him?”

Allison sighed, she had, “I sent him with Stiles.”

Her father looked more annoyed, and if possible like he was going to go back to sleep rather than stay awake and calm. “Exactly what possessed you to call Stiles Stalinski to take care of a witch?”

Allison shook her head, “she’s human, she wasn’t a witch, never was, she was being controlled by a poltergeist.”

Her father’s eyes opened again, “possession is hard to determine, what made you think it was possession?”

She explained the bite on her wrist, which had faded the farther away from the warehouse they got, until there was no gunshot or bite at all. She explained about having to cut the woman with a beer bottle that Stiles happened to have in his back seat. And she explained the stories that would soon be his to tell. The camping story with Derek, which he seemed displeased about. The going over to Stiles’ place to spend the night, which he seemed even more displeased about. And finally, she told him about Derek, and his apparent blindness. Derek, who was sitting a few beds away on the opposite wall looked angry when Allison finished the last story. He didn’t want anyone to know. But it was already too late.

“Derek is blind?” she nodded. “Shit.”

Allison had hardly bothered to think about her father’s reaction. He reacted much more calmly than he should have. He should have been vindicated, or maybe even upset. But he looked so sad. Like he was resigned to do something that only he knew how to do. Allison suddenly had a picture of the family dog back when she was little. She tried to ignore the similarities, but couldn’t. 

Isaac came into view, two cups of coffee in his hands. Derek had been discharged hours ago, but he had stayed, and so had Isaac. They were waiting. Mr. Argent, the unknown version of him, waved Isaac over, only then noticing the tube sticking in his left hand. He winced as it pulled at his skin.

Derek and Isaac came over, Derek only barely touching Isaac, trusting him to care for him, but not giving him much to take care of. Derek looked very imposing, he wore sunglasses now. It made him look both strong and weak. She knew that this was a front. She would always know when Derek wasn’t being Derek. “You motioned for us to join you?”

Mr. Argent, the unknown version looked from Isaac to Derek. “You are staying at my house until you can either see or you choose to give up being the Alpha. This is not a negotiation, and Isaac is staying with you. Allison, you are moving to the apartment that Derek is leasing, and you will continue to go to school. Both of you. I don’t need an argument right now. Allison, give him the keys, show him where everything is, and tell the rest of the hunter’s that our house is officially off limits. Tell them that we have a code Zeta on our hands. Ok?”

There was no uncertainty in his voice, no anger. Just flat resolution. Derek nodded; Isaac looked at him, then nodded as well. Allison couldn’t believe what she was seeing, and normally she would have asked Derek a few questions with her eyes, questions only he would have understood. But then the feeling of sadness gripped her. They would never exchange looks. They walked out the hospital, this time Derek touching her.

Isaac took his car and followed her, all the way home. “There is something wrong about me driving you around, you know that?”

Derek didn’t respond at first. It took him a few minutes to either come up with a response, or to make himself talk, either way, it was a few minutes of silence that wasn’t comfortable between the two of them. “I know. I am usually a better driver.”

She snorted, “You are talking to a girl who can drive around a corner at 60mph.”

Derek smiled, “Try it at 120, then get back to me.”

She looked at him, then scoffed, “yeah right, I doubt it.”

Derek looked over at her, and with his sunglasses on, Allison almost felt like he was looking at him, but no, he wasn’t. “Let me take the wheel now. I’ll prove it.”

It was back; they were joking. And it was comfortable. But as his last words fell she felt the change. “You are depressed right now.”

He looked at her again, then perked his head to one side, barking an order to Isaac, who’s car fell back quite a bit. “Yeah. I am. I hate this. I mean, I don’t hate it as much as I would if you were dead, but right now, I hate this.”

She smiled a bit, “You don’t want me dead, that’s always a good thing, usually.”

He smiled back, but it wasn’t the smile she was used to, not even close, “I am not depressed. I’m just frustrated. Trust me, I’ll get my sight back. I don’t want Scott or Stiles to be an Alpha anymore than you do.”

Allison looked startled, “Stiles?”

Derek was silent for a little while, Isaac’s car took a right, taking a detour. “Yeah, I like Scott enough, and he’d make a good Alpha, but he’s very soft, he couldn’t do what needed to be done. Stiles would be better, but he’d have to stop being so aloof so often. I mean, he’d be a great leader, one day.”

Allison looked at things from Derek’s perspective. “My dad would be angry if you created another werewolf. You know that. You know that, so what’s up? Why not Isaac?”

Derek smiled, softly, it was a better smile, but still not hers. “He’s too soft, too cuddly. He likes being taken care of, he likes protecting others. He is softer than Scott. I just didn’t notice before. He was so angry, so hurt that I couldn’t have known that. Then when Boyd and Erica left, well, he was just… well. You saw him.”

She had seen Isaac. He was constantly moping around, hanging with Stiles, and hence Lydia, and sometimes Allison saw him with Scott around town. He was not a strong person. Not like a leader needed to be. Then again, neither was she. “He could learn to fake it.”

Derek looked at Allison, all seriousness, “He could, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

Allison just nodded, he didn’t see it, but he knew she agreed. They pulled into the driveway, and waited for Isaac to show up before they got out, there was a lot of things that they could have talked about. Lots of things that she felt could be said, but she was holding back. There were things that Derek wanted to say too, and there were issues that would need to be addressed, lots of little issues. Nothing serious though. Nothing certain. 

“Allison?”

“Hmm?”

“Will you promise me something?”

Allison looked at him expectantly, “sure.”

“Just don’t let my cat out.”

Allison didn’t think, just blurted out her question, “You have a cat?”

Derek scowled, but if was a friendly scowl, a scowl that he reserved for those he really liked, there was no frustration in it. She smiled at his slightly confused expression, “Yes, I have a cat, why is it that everyone who knows that acts like that is the strangest thing in the world?”

Allison tried not to giggle, she really did. “Because cats hate Scott. Because Stiles says that cats are the devil, because everything I have ever heard about cats and wolves sounds like they hate each other for some odd reason.”

Derek continued to scowl, “don’t tell Scott, or Stiles. And yes, my cat hates me, are you happy now?”

Allison looked at his scowl, her giggling abated. “No, I’m not happy. For a long time, I wasn’t, and now, when I know that everything will be ok, well sort of, well I can’t help but think that you deserve someone in your life that loves you.”

Derek stiffened. What had she said? There were no phrases in her head now, no phrases that covered over what she said. None that could cover what she didn’t say. There were definitely words that shouldn’t have been said, words that should have been saved. But she meant it. Suddenly Derek being happy mattered, and it scared her a bit.

Derek released his shoulders, but he had put on an air of formality, she saw it. She would always see it. “Thanks. For everything. I’ll have Isaac let you know if we need anything.”

Allison didn’t say anything, just exchanged keys with him, told them the code, and drove away.


	10. There Was Pizza

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Weeks go by, stuff goes down... yep, summarized.

“I hate you,” she said to the cat, for the fifth time that week. She had decided that the cat just hated everyone, she had text Derek as much. Mind you, she and cats usually got along, even devil cats usually. “And if you think I’ll feed you tonight after you tried to hamstring me? No way.”

The cat gave a pitiful mew, then put its head up and walked away, as if to show that it really wasn’t that hungry. The tomcat, because there was no way a girl cat could have that much muscle on her, was really starting to piss Allison off. Maybe that’s why Derek liked it. He liked to surround himself with very annoying things. Like Stiles.

The longer she stayed at the apartment, the less Derek she saw around the place. He had a TV, which was still sporting a thin film of protective plastic when she got there. The remote was still in the bag. There was a laptop, but it looked like it too was rarely used, as she had to search for the power cord in order to get it to boot up. The power cord was in a box marked “stuff I don’t really use.” The box was shoved behind another few boxes labeled, “Laura’s bedroom.” She touched them as little as possible. They were sacred, and she wouldn’t be sacrilegious.

The cat was the least of her problems staying at the apartment. The biggest problem was that now everyone knew that Derek was blind, and he was angry, and when he was angry, he usually ran away. But because Allison was stuck in the apartment, and Derek was stuck with whoever was dragging him around, it usually was a three person job to get Derek away from whatever was bothering him. She could have taken him away by herself, but her dad was really adamant that a member of the pack be with Derek at all times. No matter what. This had lead to some interesting situations. The days that Isaac was in charge, there was little to no problems. Unless Derek needed to use the bathroom, in which case Isaac always looked a little uneasy about, but Derek was really annoyed by it all.

Then there were Scott Days. They deserved to be chronicled in a book of bad interactions between exes. It wasn’t her fault that he kept on loving her so much. It wasn’t her fault that they were in this situation. And yes, it was kind of her fault that they broke up, but he didn’t need to keep on looking at her with such affection. Again, she wondered if she ever loved him like she should of, if she still loved him like he deserved. Because as much as his constant love upset her, she knew it was only upsetting because he deserved better and it was hurting him.

The few weeks between the fire and this particular Tuesday were both eventful and dull. The fully aware would notice that Stiles and Danny had become this amazingly studious machine, who practiced lacrosse and tried to beat Lydia’s GPA by pooling an exorbitant amount of extra projects around their heads. Lydia herself was doing one extra project; she claimed that it would be just enough to beat them both. She didn’t seem so sure of her claim to valedictorian anymore. “But we have another year to go, so we’ll see.”

Scott had been studying more too, but that was mainly because he had little else to do. His life hadn’t centered around her before she came around, and the whole wolf thing had turned it upside down, but suddenly Scott was studying harder, going to practice with a book while he waited for the coach to call him. Derek was coming to practice too, but only because Peter had decided that it would be best that everyone be together for practice, except him. Scott had stopped looking at Allison so much. She felt sad, yet happy. He was moving on, and he would heal.

Peter and Mr. Argent the hunter were usually pretty civil towards each other. They talked about the supernatural, and Allison had vague memories of dreams, but couldn’t put them down in concrete terms. All she could really remember were that they were there, and that there were usually too many balloons to have actually existed. They combined their bestiaries; especially did they enjoy the fact that Lydia had translated everything in the course of doing some extra credit work for their guidance councilor/Latin/Spanish teacher. Allison herself was happier, everything was calm, and yes, they were still talking of poltergeists, but that talk was slowly going away.

Derek had not recovered his sight, and her father, the hunter knew that sooner or later something was going to happen. They didn’t know what it would be, or when, but it would happen. “Scott?” she said on the Tuesday in question, he was playing goalie, and the coach was yelling. He looked at her for a second, the only consideration that she was given, “let’s do something tonight, all of us.”

She had canceled practice, and she knew Derek was pushing them all hard, but she wasn’t about to have a perfectly boring Tuesday go to waste. Scott nodded his head, apparently too enthusiastically, because the coach was shouting about it over everything else. Derek looked back at her, his sunglasses covering his sightless eyes. He looked like he was about to comment on something, but then he held his tongue back. 

Allison called her dad, who happened to be making dinner with Peter, and asked if it would be ok if she and Derek went out for dinner. Her father didn’t bother to ask any questions, but told her that school nights were early curfews, and that she should really not stay up too late anyways. She smiled as she hung up. Her life was going exactly how she wanted it to.

So of course everything would go to hell. Dinner was a simple affair of a few pizzas and a lot of talking. Danny and Isaac were having a belching competition, which Lydia scoffed at, but eventually after all was said and done, Lydia was the winner. And Scott was talking with Stiles about comics and video games. Lydia and Derek were talking about something stupid, but nothing was really being said by anyone. Allison just allowed it to happen, she stayed quiet and reserved, she watched as the people she had suddenly built her life around were enjoying themselves, and she just allowed herself to be happy.

Of course another pack would show up, hearing that the Alpha was blind. And yes, there are those crazy werewolves that think that if they can seize power, then they should. They came into the restaurant, and suddenly everyone was sniffing the air and even the four humans knew that something was up. They sat far enough away, but there were nine of them. They looked like any other group, talking about something funny, enjoying themselves. But Derek was scowling, an air of formality that she wished he didn’t have to put on. She quickly text her dad that ‘something fishy’ was up.

They paid their bills, they got up, and they each agreed to see each other the next day, for school, for lunch, for anything. They walked out the front door. The youngest member of the other pack had to have been thirty. They were all strong looking, even the short little thing in the corner looked like she could probably have bench pressed Derek, but she was a werewolf, and that made her all the more dangerous. They drove their separate ways, Isaac and Derek driving straight for her house. Stiles took his Jeep to drive to his place, but she knew he wouldn’t drive straight there, he would stop by the vet office, to pick up some mountain ash.

Allison felt the pull of the gun under her seat, it was suddenly heavy, but she had no aconite. She wished she had been more alert, but there was little she could do about that. She saw a shadow running fast behind her car, she hit the gas, and outpaced it. They had all silently agreed to meet back at her house, but had a plan to keep everyone safe, or at least safe looking. The eyes of her attacker were yellow. A beta. Good. She turned on her radio, she needed a bit of music to calm her nerves.

The beta either thought that it was being stealthy or that she was harmless, either way, it was wrong. When she turned the corner, she pulled the gun from under her seat, making sure not to make too much noise pulling it out, she turned another corner, unnecessarily, and pulled out the clip from the little spot she had placed it in when she got it. Finally, she turned the corner and slammed on her brakes. The Beta slowed, suddenly wary, but still coming forward. Allison smiled, it was the little waif of a thing she had seen earlier. “Don’t worry, I know all about you. You can’t scare me. Just leave me alone, ok?”

The beta kept coming closer, her eyes glowing still. She was really pretty, now that Allison saw her, except that she had mutton chops, and her face was far too wolfed out to be beautiful, but she looked like a model, even still. 

Allison pulled the gun together, and opened her door at the same time, she hid behind the open door, the beta coming around the long way, a scare tactic. “what do you want with us? Can’t you just leave us alone?”

The beta looked at Allison, “you don’t get it, when you hear stories of weak packs, it makes us all sick. I mean, look at you all. Eating pizza, when your alpha should have been killed the second he was limped. It would have been a mercy killing. And you should have turned all your humans too, poor job of running a pack, too many weak links. Too bad your Alpha didn’t send anyone with you.”

Allison had heard enough, “too bad I’m not in the pack,” she said, not even thinking as she pulled the trigger, once, twice. The two red splashes and the scream was enough to let her know she had hit her target. She called a hunter, telling him of the position of the body, and reminding him to keep her alive, but incapacitated. “Don’t use electricity, if you can help it, there will be a lot of them if I have my way, and I don’t want them to be down for too long.”

The hunter showed up in less than five minutes, and Allison left, because really, she was worried about her pack. And suddenly she knew, knew in the back of her mind, in the whole of her being that Derek had lied to her, for the first time. He didn’t want Stiles or Scott to become the Alpha. He wanted her.


	11. The Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allison becomes the leader, surprise!

Allison drove to her house, looking in her mirrors and checking her phone. Lydia was at the house, she had been followed, but had lost him when she stopped a cop and winked at him. The beta who had been following her fell back, then Lydia had sped away. Lydia was deviously good at manipulating everything around her. Stiles had picked up mountain ash, just enough to cover his house, but he was trapped there, and his dad was asleep. The beta that had followed him was gone, but Stiles couldn’t leave without upsetting the ash, and that wasn’t something he wanted to have his dad around, or him outside of the protection. Allison agreed with him, then told him that she had hidden a gun somewhere in his house. She told him that if he really needed it, she would tell him exactly where it was.

She lied to him.

He calmed down.

She would apologize tomorrow, or whenever this was over.

It was reaching closer to eight when the first attack happened. It was on Isaac, who had dropped off Derek at her house and driven around the neighborhood. But there was something odd about his description of the beta who had attacked him. And when he came back, he was covered in blood and scratch marks. He had been the victor. Allison couldn’t think of what that would mean for the other guy. She hoped that he was dead.

Derek sat in a chair, listening as Allison pulled out maps and handed out ammunition to Danny and Lydia, who both looked like a gun was the last thing they should have been holding. Stiles called, saying that there were two pairs of eyes outside his house, and one was red. This made Allison pause. “Don’t go towards your window again tonight, ok?”

Stiles snorted, “My bed is covered by two big windows. Not that I’d be able to sleep after this. But do you mind explaining why I shouldn’t go to a window?” A shattering sound was his retort, “They broke my bedroom window. The bastards!”

Allison smiled a bit, rueful, but very happy that he was at least safe. “Does your dad sleep by a window?”

“No, he doesn’t. Thank god. But just in case, I’m going to do something about that, where is that gun.”

Allison shook her head, “I’m not telling you yet, I have the text already written, you just have to send me an SOS, a real SOS Stiles. Ok? Just calm down. When I can get a hunter team over there, you won’t have any problems. Got it?”

Derek looked up at her, nodded his head, then looked away.

Stiles hung up the phone after that, and Allison let herself breathe a bit before she placed the call. “I need a team out in front of the Sheriff’s house, be as discrete as possible. There might be an Alpha.”

Allison looked at her dad. He was going over some maps with Peter now. He heard them mention aconite, but it was ignored after a few seconds. “Derek, I need you to think about something for me,” he nodded, “Did you know of anyone outside of this room that would know that you are an Alpha?”

Derek frowned, “Well I think the only other people who know are hunters, Deaton and a poltergeist. What does that have to do with anything?”

Allison was trying to connect the dots. “How do you get rid of a poltergeist?”

Nobody knew. Allison swore. “Well this is just great. Now how do you get rid of a gigantic pack of werewolves who happen to be right in the middle of your neighborhood?”

Her dad smiled, “flash bombs.”

She looked at him, then noticed that he wasn’t kidding. She ran to the garage, pulled open the cabinet, and grabbed a few canisters. She pulled one box from the back, a failsafe box that she knew of, but had never used. It was aconite gas, and she couldn’t help but feel like she was turning into her mother when she thought of using it.

“Here, give me that.” Scott said, he had silently snuck up on her. “Never thought we’d be doing this again, fighting another pack. It is strange.”

She nodded, but added nothing. They went back to the main room. Derek was brooding, and she knew why. He wanted to rip them all apart. If she had her way, she’d let him, and then she’d join him in killing them all.

“Derek, don’t start feeling down on yourself, I’ll hurt you myself. Lydia, I need you and Danny to work on something. While you do that, Scott and Isaac and Peter, you are going to find anything you can to board up the front windows. And if you fight the Alpha, kill him. Don’t worry about anything but killing him. Just try not to become an Alpha. Please. Nobody needs that tonight.”

Scott and Isaac nodded, and Peter looked pensive. She cursed at herself, she might have given him the idea. He followed the boys around the house, covering the windows with metal sheets and wood. Her father was sitting down next to Derek, going over some of the defenses that they could have, but didn’t. Allison couldn’t help but feel annoyed by the whole situation, but it was time for her to be a huntress, and this was as good of a time as any for her to put on a strong front. 

She finally detailed exactly what she wanted to Danny and Lydia, and they looked at each other and started chatting in another language, possibly English, but it was a very science driven version of it. She left them to hash out exactly what was going to happen.

Derek looked dejected. Allison couldn’t stand it. “Derek, come with me.”

He stood, obeying her order, but his eyes were closed, a sure sign that he wasn’t happy about this. They were probably red. They went up to her room, “Derek, talk to me.”

“Quit ordering me around.”

Allison shook her head, again wishing that she hadn’t cut her hair so short, Derek must have heard her touch it, because suddenly his hand was grabbing hers. “You are taking too much on, I’m sorry. I want to help.”

Allison laughed, “are you joking, you are so calm I can’t help but feel like everything will be ok. And if you hadn’t noticed, every time I make a decision, I look at you. And if you looked upset, I amended it.”

Derek paused, his hand still wrapped on her forearm. “You deferred to me?”

Allison smiled, “Yes, you, and my dad, but you were the one I was worried about. I mean, you are the guy who keeps everyone alive usually, even if it means that you’ll get hurt doing it. I trust your decision making. And besides, if any of us died, your damned cat would have a hissy fit.”

Derek looked at her, “I wouldn’t care, I think I hate my cat.”

Allison smiled, allowing the loosening of Derek’s grasp to put her hand in his. “Derek, we’ll get through this, and when we do, I will personally take the bastard to the vet, get him neutered and put him on an adoption list.”

He smiled, “I’ll make you keep your word.”

Of course that was the exact moment that Derek threw her towards the door, and of course, he couldn’t aim so she fell into the corner. She was winded, but then again, that didn’t seem so important as the red glowing eyes that had smashed through her window suddenly came into focus. Derek was standing directly in front of her. Beta form. The alphas snarled at each other. Derek didn’t want to go into his alpha form, he never did. But the alpha was so much bigger, he looked so much stronger. And suddenly Allison was very scared.

It seemed like days, the two of them staring at each other, then she heard other windows being smashed. And she knew that they were going to attack en masse. She watched helplessly as Derek listened for the Alpha to move left or right, following slowly, waiting. The Alpha had a snarl on its face, but it looked like a happy dog, playing with a puppy. Derek was the puppy, and that made her feel sick. There was a scream, a man’s scream. And then more sounds of struggles. Allison hoped that it wasn’t someone she knew.

There was a bang, then more scrambling downstairs. There were glass objects being broken, and then neither Alpha moved. Someone had been killed, she knew it. She didn’t know on which side. But someone was dead. She tried not to panic. But she did. She got to her feet, feeling the pain in her side. She might have had a cracked rib.

“You shouldn’t have come.”

Derek’s words were filled with hate, his body ridged and ready to claw, to kill, to protect. She felt suddenly safer, but knew that they weren’t.

The alpha padded left, knocking over a lamp. It was the one that her mother had picked out for her. Derek was distracted for a second, and the alpha pounced. They were wrestling her her tiny room, and then they broke through a wall, and they were wrestling in the bathroom. Then they came back through the wall, her vision picked up on all the dark red splotches that stained almost everything that they touched. It was too dark to differentiate between the two of them. Allison could see the lighter color of Derek’s skin once in a while, but it was hard to tell, she suddenly wished he wore more light, happy colors.

The fight might have felt like years, but it probably was only a few minutes. The sounds of scrambling downstairs suddenly stilled, and she heard another bang, this time a bit louder, and she heard coughing. Lydia and Danny had set off the vapor gas, she just hoped that Scott Isaac and Peter were ok. Suddenly the fight in front of her was more intense. Suddenly the alpha jumped back and lunged at Derek, who tried to get up, but who slipped on debris. 

It was a second, that’s all it was. Allison saw it happening, she saw the alpha lunge at Derek’s throat, she saw it in slow motion. She felt it, the coming of pain. The strange feeling of anger and rage that she didn’t realize was still there. And she didn’t feel anything else.

A second was all it took.

And the fight was over.


	12. Shaken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have nothing to say

They were licking their wounds. Derek was laying on the couch. His body was bleeding still.

“Don’t feel bad, it’s not like you could have done anything differently.”

She could have, she really could have. There was something strange about seeing Derek, his unseeing eyes wide with fright, his body so fragile looking. It had shaken her. And it shook everything good and bad about her loose. Now she felt like a snow globe looking down at him. 

“You can’t blame yourself. You just have to move on.”

These words were cutting blades, filling her soul with torment. Did their source mean them to be kind? Or was this malicious? She couldn’t tell. The one thing she knew, the one thing the evidence on the couch told her, was that she should have done something different.

“He’ll be ok.”

But would he? He looked so still, his blood, the alpha’s blood, plaster dust and more blood. Was he going to be ok? She hadn’t known exactly what happened, she just knew what happened afterwards. The sudden anger, the black out, the body hitting the floor, changing back to human. Tonight she had done something she had never done before. And she couldn’t even have justified it. She felt sick. 

She wouldn’t be sick.

Her father was bleeding from a small gash on his arm still, and Peter was trying to make him take care of it. They were talking to her in turns, waiting to see if something they said affected her.

Scott was unconscious on the floor next to Derek, they didn’t have enough beds to take care of everyone. These were the two that had needed the most attention, so they were downstairs, were Deaton had worked over them for an hour and a half nonstop just trying to keep them alive. Allison couldn’t think.

“Don’t worry, It’ll be fine, why don’t you go get some sleep.”

Sleep sounded like a horrible idea. A really horrible idea.

Sleep meant dreams, and she didn’t think she would dream of anything else for the rest of her life.

Scott had done something very foolish, and had saved them all. He had heard Allison tell Danny and Lydia about the vapor, he had heard and he had known that they hadn’t finished it. The fighting had been bad. But he shouldn’t have done it. He was a fool. He should have done anything else. He should have made Danny handle it. He should have made Peter handle it. He shouldn’t have tackled the last five betas as they were crowding around Peter and Isaac. Isaac had been knocked out, he had killed two betas himself, but was knocked out. There were too many of them. Her dad told her a bit about what happened, but she was in a fog.

There had been more than thirty betas there, some of them they had had tagged before. They attacked and they maimed and they had died, all but the last five. Her dad had been knocked out at that point, Lydia and Danny had shot a few, but they hadn’t been very helpful. And Peter was a dervish, killing and moving like he was born to. He might have been. The thought alone scared Allison, and she was happy she knew the man as a good cook, and not just as a werewolf. The last five, and Peter was wounded. So Scott did something stupid, and brave.

He set off a wolf’s bane vapor bomb. He heard what Danny had told Lydia, that it wasn’t ready, he heard Lydia say how to set it off. He heard Isaac go down, even as he had killed and been an instrument of death. He had heard it, but he didn’t care. He threw himself at the betas, and then when Peter pulled Isaac away, he set off the bomb. The betas didn’t die right away, no; Lydia took care of that, a shot in the head of each. They suffered no more. But Scott, he wasn’t healing, he had an asthma attack.

So she sat there, silently thinking.

She was a murderer too, after tonight. She had never killed another person before, she had come close once, but she had been stopped before. Tonight, she was a murderer.

She had been stupid too.

She had tackled the Alpha. He hadn’t been expecting that. She had tackled him, and he had landed on a wet electrical line. He had been shocked. He was passed out, but Derek wasn’t moving, and she had a gun, and so she killed him. She didn’t know what she was doing until it was done. There was no questions asked. Lydia had killed at least seven people tonight, Danny had killed 3, and even Stiles had blood on his hands apparently. But this was different. All of those killings, except maybe Lydia’s last five, which were done of mercy more than anything, had been justified. She had no justification, not anymore.

So here lay her snow globe of emotions. Shaken beyond settling.

 

Scott.

Derek.

And suddenly, she knew, she just knew. 

 

 

She loved them both.


	13. Boxes of Stuff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allison is hiding.

Thursday morning showed no change in anyone. Danny and Lydia stayed away from the house, so did Stiles, although he came over every day, but only long enough to see that there was no change. Mrs. McCall slept in the bed with her son, the rising and falling of his chest the only indication that he was alive. Derek had been moved to her father’s room, and her bedroom had been ruined. There was a distance between them all. And Allison refused to go to school. Thursday morning showed no change.

She heard from Isaac that Stiles was a crying wreck. Lydia had put back on her front of superiority; the rest of the world was not allowed to see her. Danny had broken up with his boyfriend, and he hadn’t been to school Wednesday afternoon, but he was there in the morning. Peter told her that these sort of wounds took time, that aconite poisoning took time to heal. And yet, through all of it, she wasn’t sure which she was worried about more. There were two lives that she didn’t want to lose, not ever. And yet, she knew that beyond anything else, they might be lost.

She didn’t know any of this. This was all her imagination, it was better to feel like she knew.

She was sitting in Derek’s apartment, like she had been on Wednesday, and now, creeping up on noon, she hadn’t moved beyond the front door, she hadn’t slept, she hadn’t eaten, she had just sat on the big recliner, feeling empty and trying to get her emotions to settle. They whirled around her like a blizzard; wind swept away at her heart, her stomach, her soul. All was raw. She sat in the recliner and waited.

Thursday night found her feeling less turbulent, but still raw, still shaken.

Friday found her screaming out as she awoke from a nightmare. She was too exhausted to fight it, so she succumbed to the darkness again, where she could relive Tuesday over and over again.

The sun was shining on Friday. It didn’t fit in with the world.

There was a knock on the door. The sun started to set. There was a knock on the door. She had gone three days in this apartment, and other than the most basic needs, food, water and using the bathroom, she hadn’t moved from the recliner. She had grabbed her cell charger, waiting for a phone call. She had turned her phone off, because she didn’t want to hear it.

Her phone sat in the chair next to her, off, fully charged and taunting.

She thought it over once again.

She loved Derek.

She loved Scott.

She hated herself.

She loved Derek for reasons that weren’t conventional. He was strong and supportive. He knew what it was like to feel that incredible sadness, and yet he consoled her. He always had her best interests in mind whenever they were together, and she knew more about him than anyone else did, if not for the fact that she could see through his exterior, than for the fact that he really did talk to her more openly than anyone else. Yes, she loved Derek, more than she wanted to admit.

She loved Scott for similar reasons. He was strong and supportive. He was patient and kind. He emphasized with her pain, but didn’t try to pretend that he knew what was going on, just was there. He always thought of her, what she needed, what she wanted, and strived to be the best person he could be. He put in the work for her, for them. He was an open book to her, and everyone else around him, but for some reason, she felt like she got some extra chapters, chapters that very few others could have ever understood, let alone read. Where as he was open and friendly with everyone, to her, he was sweet and kind, thoughtful and serious. Every kiss had told her volumes of how he really felt. Could she love him again? The way he deserved?

She hated herself. There were some really terrible things about Allison Argent. As a hunter, she had tortured her school friends, she had killed a man in cold blood, and she had done terrible terrible things, misguided maybe, but terrible nonetheless. As a daughter, she had lied. So many nights she had lied to her family, her father, her mother, her aunt even. She really didn’t have any excuses for the lies anymore, they seemed so small and unimportant. She had hurt them with her lies, she had hurt others with the same lies, and she was to blame for their pain. As a friend she was a liar too, to Lydia, to Stiles and Danny, even to Derek a few times.

But worse, the worse part of all, Allison hated herself for the love she felt. She had been told that it was unnatural and wrong by her parents. She had lost her mother to that love, and by that love. It felt strange that a person so wretched as her could love, or be loved. So she sat in the chair, waiting.

She woke up screaming again, Saturday, very early. She decided to turn on her phone. It came as no surprise that she had messages. Texts from Lydia and Danny, many from Stiles, a few from her dad, and a lot from Isaac. They all said in varying degrees of care and frustration to call, to text to be alive with them. She couldn’t respond to a single one. So she responded to all of them, at once, a single dot on a text, enough to let them know that she was alive. And she continued to sit.

Her voicemail box was full. A message from her father asking her to come to the house when she felt up to it, that everything was going well. There was one from a hunter, detailing the death of the woman Allison had shot, the woman who took her own life rather than become an Omega. Allison heard the report and ran to the bathroom to throw up, she had killed two people that night, she just didn’t know it. Another hatred to pile on.

The next few messages were inconsequential. Lydia had wanted to know if Allison wanted her to pick up her homework, if she wanted to do anything. She might have mentioned ice cream, but Allison had cried too much to hear it. Lydia was her best friend, and she didn’t remember if she had ever had one of those before. Stiles had called, asking her to just come over to his house, to watch a movie, they didn’t have to talk, and she just had to show up. He was trying, she knew. It felt strange. Danny even called, saying that he wanted to talk to her, if she wanted to talk to him. He sounded less energetic than she had ever heard him; it was such a sad message.

The last message had her attention. It was from Isaac. “Hey, Allison, it’s me. Isaac? I just wanted to let you know that me and Peter have been feeling stronger lately. It feels like they are going to wake up soon. It could be hours or maybe tomorrow, but they are going to be ok. So just let us know you got this, alright?”

The last message broke her heart. Isaac was soft, too soft. Derek would be mad at her later, when he was awake, because she didn’t take care of him. He needed comfort and strength. He needed to be taken care of and to protect. He wasn’t the leader, but only because he knew what he needed, and couldn’t get past that.

Allison wondered, not for the first time in her forced solitude, exactly what it was that she needed. She couldn’t find the answer to that, so she decided to take a shower, as leaving this house was inevitability. She used the generic shampoo and conditioner, the stuff that didn’t smell like fruit or sex, just clean. Derek never smelled like this stuff. Did he have cologne? She couldn’t remember seeing it. Maybe it was a deodorant stick. In all the weeks of her staying here, she hadn’t looked around. She had respected his privacy.

Now it seemed so foolish of her to have done that. She turned off the water, pulled the towel around herself and got ready for a very difficult day in silence. Her phone hadn’t rung once, not even a notification beep. But she knew that hopefully, wherever they were, her friends were sleeping. Allison got dressed, silently. Her breath sounded too loud, but there was nothing she could do about that. She pulled the closet door open, the door she had given a respectful berth to only a few days prior. Did she want to do this? Did she want to break the sanctity of Derek’s inner most thoughts? She had to know. She needed to see.

She opened the box in front labeled, “Laura’s bedroom.” In it was a lot of clothes. She picked her way through the first few tops, tops that were both old and new, one still had the tags on it. She knew that they held Laura’s scent. She touched them as little as possible, but wondered how much they still smelled like her after all this time. She chose to ignore her question when she felt the picture frame. It was a very young Derek, a tooth missing from his mouth, supposedly freshly pulled based on the way that he held something too small to see. There was a young girl in the frame with him, her eyes were closed, as were Derek’s. Their family must have had a strange version of one two three cheese, and the thought made her chuckle. She put the picture on the bed, she would bring it to him. He deserved to see it, or at least know it was there, she amended.

There were more clothes under that, but nothing else in that box. She put the clothes back, folding them like they had been folded when she took them out, and carefully reclosed the cardboard flaps. She opened the box behind it. She hadn’t wanted to, not after seeing how sad Derek really was inside. She hadn’t realized it until now, he had lost his entire family, every single member. Even Peter had died on him for a time.

The second box had a few shirts on top, Allison almost closed it in frustration. But then she saw it. A glittering something had caught the first rays of sun shining through the window behind her. She dove her hand in to grab it before she lost track of its position. Her hand emerged holding a locket and a letter. She didn’t know what to do, she wanted to read the letter, but she couldn’t. The scrawl on the front read Derek.She was nervous.

She looked at the oval locket instead. The heart on the front was both simple and complex. The inscription on the back read “family” as if that was the only thing in the world that would have possibly been written there. Inside, it wasn’t empty, like she suspected it might have been. Inside lay two white pieces of paper, old, faded and yet still there. On it, stick figures. Numerous stick figures all with initials scrawled under it. Each figure had a tiny smiley face on their head, each a bit taller or shorter than the person next to them, but they looked like they were exactly the proportionate height to have been family. A big family of stick figures.

She knew the lettering under each member wasn’t a woman’s touch. She knew that this was something that Derek had made. Maybe right after the fire, when he had needed this sort of thing. Maybe it had been years later, when he could finally think about them again, wanting a constant reminder, and what better way to remember them than the one person who was left? Derek had given her this locket. She put it on top of the picture frame on the bed. She knew she would need to give it to him too.

The letter suddenly felt like lead. She opened it slowly, it had been opened too many times before, she could tell. It had also been ripped more than once, and had been taped back together. She pulled out the slip of paper, seeing and feeling numerous pieces of tape, all of them apparently taped over again, this time in straight lines, a scissor must have been involved. There was so much tape, it was basically laminated. The words had spaces between them here and there, but he kept it. There was nothing on the ripped up paper except a few words.

_Derek_

_Just thought I would let you know that I am going back to Beacon, I hope you don’t mind. I’ll be back soon. Love you baby bro._

_PS go out and have a drink, you deserve it you little punk, I found my birthday present last night, you should have hidden it on the roof._

She found his birthday present. Derek’s birthday present. The thing that she had put aside. She picked it up. This was heavy. She felt the weight of his love for his sister in it. The weight of his family. There were too many memories suddenly in this apartment. There was sudden clarity. She had never known Derek at all. But she knew him now, better.

She put the locket on top of the picture, pulled them both to her chest and let tears drop. She walked to the front door, feeling resolute, and full of love.

***


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was food, and apparently blueberries, but that wasn't the important part.

She had put the photo on the small end table in the living room, right next to Derek’s head, the locket she put around his neck. What anyone who saw it thought, she wouldn’t care. They weren’t for her, they were for him. She looked at his face again, knowing that she loved the person connected to it, and walked out of the living room.

The house was a disaster, boarded up, blood cleaned up, but still a disaster. There were holes in the walls, a stair had been broken off, and there was still glass missing from the windows. She didn’t want to think about how much death had happened here. They were going to have to move. There was no question in her mind that that was the eventuality of it.

She crept as silently as possible to the door that contained the other part of her heart. The bed was empty except for his unmoving form. He looked at peace, like he was really just sleeping. He looked better too, less scarred and more like the boy she had met when she first started classes at Beacon Hills High. Was that really so long ago?

She closed the door as silently as possible. Behind her was Peter, if she hadn’t already known that someone would be there, she would have jumped. The fact that it was him made her both angry and relieved. 

“You are in trouble, but before you get grounded, you and I are going for a drive. Let’s go get breakfast. On me.”

He said it in such a way that there was no question that she had to follow him. So they crept out of the house, into her car, and down the road toward town.

They said nothing all the way to the café.

They sat, ordered coffee, and waited for the food to get there. “When did you realize it?”

His question was really vague, anyone overhearing it would have been wondering exactly what they were talking about, she silently thanked him with her eyes. “I think it was a few days ago. After all that happened. I don’t know, it just sprung up on me last night really.”

Peter nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. “And what do you intend to do about it?”

Allison didn’t know. “I don’t plan on doing anything.”

Peter nodded again, “Well might I suggest that you don’t play this game without a strategy? You’ll end up losing more than you bargained for. Trust me, I’ve dealt with this before.”

She expected him to tell her what to do, to tell her to choose one and be done with it all. She expected more than a gaze filled with sadness and understanding. She even expected him to be angry, but he wasn’t. He knew her heart better than she did. And he was right, there really shouldn’t be a game, they were more important to her. She would have to choose before she hurt them all.

“Mmm, fresh blueberries, smells delicious. Let’s eat.” It was really the last words they spoke to each other. Even on the car ride home, she said nothing to him. She was deep in thought, and nothing in her world made sense.

She loved Scott.

She loved Derek.

She hated herself.

“I know what nobody else does,” he said, pulling over on the side of the street, far enough away that she could see the turning point to her street, but far enough that they wouldn’t be overheard. “You are going to have to deal with the consequences of that action later, preferably with your father. It doesn’t help to ease the pain, when you carry around so much guilt. Look at Derek, he blames himself for everything. You can be like him, or you can get better.”

She nodded, and was silent. They pulled into her driveway, he let her get out first. “Just think about it, I know it is a lot to think about, but it’s important that you do.”

She nodded again, and she walked to the front door. The sun was shining, which was odd, because her world was in turmoil. Her father sat down in the kitchen, on the half broken counter lay his breakfast. He looked tired.

She just walked over, not looking directly at him. He was silent. “I’m sorry, dad.”

He looked at her, she knew he would always look at her, even if she never could again. “I was so worried about you.”

He sounded weak, heartbroken; it was how she felt. He pulled her into a hug, “You should have called. All I got from you in the last few days was a period. Do you have any idea how angry I got? All I got from my daughter was a period?” he held her tighter, if possible. “I was so scared; never do that to me again.”

She cried again, now that she felt how scared he must have been. But she couldn’t figure out what was causing this. She couldn’t wrap her head around it.

“I don’t care how much space you need to take, I mean, you had to kill a man,” she winced, not visibly, but inside, at his words, “I will let you take it, but never go a day without talking to me? Ok? Even if it’s just a hello, I need to know you are ok.”

She hugged him back in earnest, he loved her. And so they stayed, minutes on end, breakfast going cold. And she held him, because right now, he was her one sure thing.

An hour later, Scott woke up. His mother had just come by after a late night shift, and he had grumbled about the sun being too bright. She had laughed hysterically, and hugged her son. They left soon after, mainly because Scott really needed to get a change of clothes, and was mortified that his mother had changed him, and that he had worn a diaper at some point. Suddenly she wondered what Derek was going to say when he woke up, if he had worn a diaper or not.

Around three, Derek was starting to stir, but he woke up much more slowly than Scott had. He grumbled in his sleep, something Peter said he had done since he was a child. He moved a bit, making himself more comfortable, then he slept for a few more minutes. His eyes opened, quickly and with awareness. He was wary of everything, and this must have been how he woke up whenever there were other people around.

The thing that stopped everyone in the room, and probably stymied any arguments about diapers or changing, was that Derek’s eyes moved to each of the still figures around the room.

“What are you all staring at?” had been his response.

His brain was excused for being slow, and then they rejoiced a little that he got his eyes back, a miracle according to Allison, but she didn’t voice it. Peter and Derek left, and suddenly her house seemed very empty. She had no escape, and she was left alone with her father, and her memories.

They talked about things that happened, they talked, but she lied, she couldn’t tell him what happened in that room, she would never be able to tell him.

He went to bed early, to get some sleep. She went to bed early, to think in the dark. The shadows didn’t come to her window that night, or the next. And suddenly she missed them. But she could only have one shadow, one shadow and the person it belonged to. It was Tuesday afternoon, as she sat in the ice cream shop after school, when she finally chose exactly which shadow she wanted.

She had never thought harder, longer or more in her whole life. It was a difficult weekend, a difficult week, and it wasn’t even halfway over. “Dad, I have to go.”

Her father was drinking tea, something he only did when he was too caffeinated to drink coffee anymore. “Come, sit, I wanted to talk to you.”

She obliged him, she was technically grounded. They sat as he drank his tea.

“I am ok with this, with him.”

Allison looked flabbergasted, “are you really?”

Her father nodded, “I might not like what he is, but I respect who he is, and how he makes you feel. I respect that he would do anything to protect you, to protect anyone who he loves. I expect that you keep a respectful boundary around both of you when at this house and I expect that you use protection if it ever gets to that point. But I don’t expect you to end it, because that just won’t work. Not the way he looks at you, not the way he comforts you, not the way he acts around you. And definitely not the way you act around him.”

She nodded. Her dad had noticed. The thoughts that had taken her weeks to iron out and to understand, he knew. She let go of the breath she had been holding.

“I have to go talk to him.”

He smiled, a sad smile, the smile that spoke of baby girls coming home from the hospitals and mandatory tea parties in pink lacy rooms. And crossbow practice, because that’s what they did. “Well, I won’t stop you, just remember, it’s a school night, so try to be home at a decent hour, ok?”

She nodded. And went to go grab her jacket.

As she started walking out the door, her dad called out, “and say hi to Melissa for me.”

She stopped in her tracks. She didn’t know how to take that. Her dad didn’t understand. Everything he said was suddenly in her head, making her decision complicated again.

She pulled out of the driveway, feeling suddenly unsure and quite heavy. She pulled up to the stop sign, a decision playing heavily on her mind. If she went straight, she would be at Scott’s house, a place where her dad was happy, a place where he accepted her choices and where she knew she would love and be loved.

But everything he had said in reference to Scott also applied to Derek, which a left turn would lead to. That choice was love, comfort and uncomfortable situations, but very worth it. She knew that he felt about her exactly how she felt about him. He wanted her to be his Alpha, if the need ever came up. There was so much there left to explore. 

Straight she would drive to safety, to the known.

Left she was going towards the danger of the unknown.

She stayed there for minutes, not bothering to look at the road ahead, then she pulled her foot off the brake and drove.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so this totally breaks all semblence of continuality and what not, but seriously! i wrote this chapter back in March! MARCH! Do you want to know what I thought was good writing back in March?
> 
> He sounded weak, heartbroken; it was how she felt. He pulled her into a hug, “You should have called. All I got from you in the last few days was a period mark. Do you have any idea how angry I got? All I got from my daughter was a period mark?” he held her tighter, if possible. “I was so scared; never do that to me again.”


	15. The End

She knocked, the first time she had ever needed to do that.

“Allison?”

His voice sounded so heavy, she knew, she knew he needed her.

“Hi.”

“Why are you here? I thought…” whatever he had thought, he let die on his lips.

“I don’t think I could, not knowing everything I know now.”

He looked down at her, she felt so small. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

Her plea was sincere, her mind made up. “You don’t love me.”

She stopped. “I love you.”

Derek sighed, and moved out of the doorway, she walked in. “No, you don’t. You love Scott. You’ll always love Scott. Sure, we could kiss, we could have sex, but it will never be like what you and Scott have, had, could have.”

His words ran through her mind, tearing apart her fragile lies and even more fragile truths. They didn’t shake her, no, that wasn’t the purpose of the words. They settled her. “But we could have something.”

She knew they could. She had seen it, she had seen their life together. He would protect her, and she would protect him. They would be strong where the other was weak, and they would be strong for all others. They could have that, even now.

“Allison…” his voice faded, softer than a breeze, “I love you, but I don’t want to stop you from loving the man you’ve loved above all others. We don’t smell like you two smell. I’ve only smelled that on my parents.” His voice choked.

“I don’t care. I want you.”

Even as she said it, it was a lie, she knew it.

They were sitting on the couch, they had somehow gotten this far. All she had to do was reach out and touch him, kiss him, stop him from talking to her so she could show him exactly what she wanted. What she needed.

She couldn’t do it.

“Why?” she said, tears threatening her eyes.

“Because, as much as I could see us together, I know it wouldn’t be right for you, that for all the comfort and the fun and the friendship you’ve given me, I could never give you what you deserved, and it breaks my heart, thinking that I would steal from you the one thing you deserve.”

She could have fought him, she wanted to. 

She didn’t.

“We’ll still be friends.”

It was a statement.

“Maybe not any time soon, maybe not even in the near future, but some day. You’ll be happy, truly healed, and then, in our own way, we’ll be friends. There won’t be any hurt. I promise.”

She looked at him. He promised that she would be whole, that the broken parts of her would be healed. How could he? He was still broken, after all these years. What gave him the right to tell her what she needed to heal. She needed him! She wanted him!

She did nothing.

Allison looked down to her hands, hands that had just a week before killed a man in cold blood. She could never be whole, never be healed.

“Allison, look at me.”

She was crying in earnest. This was it. This was good bye. “Kiss me?”

He held her gaze, but stayed steady.

She continued, “Kiss me, just once, please?”

He looked into her wet eyes, he never had any defenses, and even now she knew he was resolved not to do it, she knew that the kiss would undo all his fancy words, all his arguments, and that that would be the beginning of them. A kiss would kill the werewolf. She suddenly recoiled, she couldn’t help it. She hated herself. Suddenly, absolutely she knew why. 

She spoke again, after minutes of silence, of staring. “We could be happy, but there would always be something bigger than us, something pulling us apart. And that would hurt you, because maybe you couldn’t resist it. And I would die again inside.”

He nodded. “I couldn’t do that to you. So go, be happy, be with Scott.”

She shook her head, “I can’t love him.”

Derek gave her a smile, a warming smile that she knew he only gave to her, “You can’t love him, but you do. I know. I’ve seen how you look at him. It’s broken, but there is love there, and it has never stopped. You can’t deny it. I see it every time we are together. Hell, even when I was blind I saw it.”

Allison thought back, every look had been a stab in some raw part of her, seeing him on the ground after that fight, well, she was there with him. Derek was well and good, but Scott had been what had thrown her over the edge.

She sobbed, and he moved to hold her, the disconnect in her heart snapped. Her love of Derek moved, migrated to a different area, and suddenly she felt calmer in his arms. “I am not good for him.”

Derek planted a small kiss on her forehead, “You are. You always will be.”

She shook her head into his chest, “no, I’m not good for him. I killed a man, Derek. I killed him and I walked away.”

Derek didn’t speak for a few seconds, then laughed, “You killed a man who tried to kill everyone you loved. I think even Scott would agree that doing that wasn’t a bad thing. You’ll understand. Have you told anyone about it?”

She tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let her, she was the monster here, “no, I didn’t. I tried to hide it from everyone. Even my dad. I don’t want anyone to know. You can’t tell anyone.”

Derek had stopped laughing long ago, but still he held her. “I won’t say anything.”

She knew he wouldn’t. “I should go, my dad will be expecting me home soon, I’m supposed to be grounded, after spending so long away from everyone, not being in contact with people. I’m in trouble, you know?”

He laughed again. “He’ll be ok, he is just worried about you. I would have been too. But I think you should go talk with Scott, you need him more now than you have ever before. Go, talk, and love him. Ok? Will you do that for me?”

Allison nodded her head, but she knew she was lying. “Ok, I’ll go.” She paused at the door, “Derek?” he nodded, “Do you think that you’ll ever find someone who makes you whole?”

Derek looked into her eyes, “I’m sure that I will one day, but I don’t know. It’s not something I usually think about.”

Allison nodded, “if me and Scott do start dating again, if we don’t talk for a while, me and you, you have to do me a favor.”

His nod was all the reassurance she needed. “You have to hang out with Stiles, not on pack business, but as a friend. Because with all the things that me and Scott need to work on, with all the time we will need to talk about things alone, I think I’d prefer it if in the back of my mind, I knew that he was being taken care of.”

Derek nodded, “anything you want. I’ll even talk with Lydia, not that she’d need another excuse to be around me, if I’m going to be with Stiles.”

Allison knew that everything would be ok. Eventually. She walked out the door, down the stairs and to her car. She made sure to keep her heart rate normal, her breathing even, but not too light, and her body in check. She did this all, mechanically. She opened the door and sat down, she put the key in the ignition and turned. She stepped on the gas after putting it in gear. It was all easy, physical things.

She turned the corner, and lost sight of his building in her rearview. She drove towards town, but changed directions and decided to drive to home. She wasn’t ready for that conversation yet, she needed to write a script, to be good at whatever interaction that needed to take place. Scott would not get the depressed over a lost love girl. No, he was going to get a girl who he deserved, one who loved him without hurt over the loss of something else, smaller surely, but some other love.

She got within twenty blocks of the turn into her neighborhood. She got within ten but had to stop. Pulling over was mechanical too, but the tears, the raw edges on her heart, those were not mechanical. She couldn’t deal with them, not in the slightest. She knew that she had just given up the second best thing she would ever have in her life. And so she cried.

She might have been there for days for all she knew. Time had ceased to matter. Her passenger door was opening. “Hey.”

She felt her heart thump. Of course he had come. He would always come when she needed him. “Hi.”

He let himself in, sitting down in the seat next to her, putting the car in park, waiting, silently.

She cried, and she couldn’t help it. It was all too much, and everything was happening too fast. She cried and she wept and she let her heart start rearranging, because it would be doing that for a long time, and this was just the start.

“Derek called me, he said that I needed to find you. What happened? Are you hurt?” his face was so soft, so loving, and yes, it hurt her heart.

So she lied, “no, I’m not hurt, I just had a really long talk with Derek.” Had the talk even lasted ten minutes? Ten seconds? It all seemed to have taken so much less time now. “I left and now I’m just sad.”

He looked like he wanted to reach out and hold her, and right now, she would have allowed it. “I’m sorry.”

It was the wrong thing to say, she felt the tears in her eyes renew, “What are you sorry for? You have done nothing wrong to me, not once, and I keep on hurting you and I keep on sending you away, and you keep on hurting yourself by coming back! Why do you keep on coming back Scott? Why?”

Scott looked sad now, really sad. “Because I need you.”

It was simple.

And suddenly, she needed him too.

And so she reached out for his hand, wiping her eyes, and the snot dripping down her face on her sleeve. She needed this. And in the back of her head, Derek was smiling, because he had been right, and she punched him for that.

They sat in that car all night, and in the morning, when she realized the sun had come up and they hadn’t spoken another word, she drove the car silently to her house, where they both got out, and where Scott lingered longer than necessary at the door. 

“I am not going to school today,” she said.

He looked at her, unsure of what to say, “I have to, but after school, I’ll text you, will you text me back?”

Had she hurt him so bad? That he would be unsure of her? That he would doubt her? She was determined not to do that again. She didn’t respond, just nodded and walked into her house.

When the door was fully closed, before she walked any further into the house that she knew would probably contain a very angry father, and maybe a grumpy undead werewolf, she text him.

“I will text you as long as I have thumbs.”

The reply came, not on screen, but in the air.

One triumphant howl.


	16. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They had no idea how they arived at this point, at this spot.

Allison didn’t know how she and Scott ended up here. A month and a half after everything, after reconciliation and long nights of talking, she felt happy. She was whole again. But she still didn’t know how they were here.

Neither did Scott apparently. “Why are we going here again?”

Allison just kept her eyes on the road, “Isaac hasn’t talked to Derek in three days, neither has Peter, and Derek didn’t respond to my text this afternoon. I just want to make sure he isn’t dead or captured by some strange creature with three horns and hooves.”

Scott looked at her, she could feel his stunned silence, “Does that exist!?”

Allison kept her face as straight as possible, “I read it up in the bestiary, apparently they come from the same line as the Loch Ness Monster, but much more cuddly.”

Scott’s jaw must have dropped, or something like that, because the silence was humorously long. When he finally did talk again, they were a few blocks away from Derek’s apartment. “The Loch Ness Monster is real?”

Allison smiled, no lie here, “Yeah, you can only reach it by taking a secret underground tunnel, but the thing is positively one of the cuddliest creatures ever.”

Scott must have been smiling, “If we ever get the chance, we have to go!”

Allison shook her head, smiling a small smile, a smile she kept just for Scott, only for Scott. “Ok.”

They pulled into the parking lot, stopped the engine and walked up to the front door, Allison pulled out her key. Scott didn’t question her as to why she had it. Maybe he knew, maybe he didn’t. All Allison knew, all that the key meant, was that she loved her friend, even if it wasn’t the same as she had wanted it to be, it was better this way. She just hoped her friend was ok.

They silently rode up in the elevator, not bothering to talk, but Scott took her hand when they were reaching the top. Allison smiled his smile down at their hands, not looking at him. Not right now. She knew that if she did, she’d want to kiss him, and kissing him made her want more, too much more.

The doors dinged open. They separated, each of them putting training to use, and Scott closed his eyes the second there was no danger. He opened them up wide, and almost scared. He whispered in her ear, so low that she was straining to hear him over the slightly still air, “I hear grunts; it sounds like someone is gagged.”

Allison nodded, pulling out her key for the door silently, putting it up to the lock hole, silently, the deadbolt was the only thing keeping them from the inside, and Allison was suddenly nervous about what they would find, she held up her left hand, Scott took the handle, she counted down: three, two, one.

She plunged the key into the lock, turning it quickly and effectively, she had the key out of her hand a millisecond before Scott pushed the door open, a move that would have ripped her hand off. She had a small gun in her purse, and it was now aimed, loaded and ready to shoot any and all dangerous entities.

And right now it was pointed at Scott.

There was a squawk. There was no other way of describing the sound. Allison was very aware of everything that was going on at the moment. And she was nervous.

“Derek!”

Scott sounded livid, Allison understood his emotions, and saw them on his face, even though his face was completely transformed from her adorable boyfriend to her scary yet adorable boyfriend. She had the gun trained on his right arm, he would heal, she knew, but she really didn’t want to pull the trigger. It felt like hours, her gun trained on Scott, the silence grew heavier.

“It’s not what it looks like,” was the response.

“Derek!?”

Derek finally acquiesced to look up, “Scott, Allison.”

Allison couldn’t help but find the whole situation somewhat ironic. “Hey Derek, what’s up?”

Derek looked at her pointedly, she saw it the split second her eyes darted to him on the couch, lounged out, his shirt wrinkled beyond normal, it made her smile. He was annoyed, and he had a very good reason. 

Derek lowered his eyebrows, or Allison assumed he did, as she still had both eyes glued to Scott’s arm, aiming it so she wouldn’t be too injured. He would heal. “Well, I was kind of in the middle of something, but that’s ok. Did you need something?”

Scott’s mouth was clenched, Allison figured that she would just have to do all the talking, as nobody seemed to be interested in doing much of that anyways, “Well, you didn’t answer my texts, and nobody has heard from you in a few days, Peter said you were usually in contact at least every other. I see now why.”

Derek wasn’t one to miss her subtle humor, “Yeah, and you barged in instead of knocking because?”

Allison didn’t bother looking at him, Scott was still breathing heavily, and his hands were open claws, if they were fists, this wouldn’t be a problem. “Yeah, you didn’t answer your text, nobody hears from you for a few days, and Scott heard noises inside of your apartment, like someone was gagged,” another squawk. “Of course I barge in, wouldn’t you?”

Derek must have looked taken aback, “Don’t worry. Nobody here is captured or gagged.”

“Good.” Her smile was for the sarcasm dripping from Derek’s voice.

“I can explain!” The squawk finally spoke.

Scott decided that maybe he should speak as well. “Why?”

Derek looked up at Scott, and he must have flashed red, because Scott whimpered a bit, then was human. She put the gun to her side, marginally. “I swear, I didn’t know what was happening until it happened, I swear.”

Scott was still looking at the floor, his jaw clenched, “But why didn’t you tell me?”

The squawk looked up. “Yeah, I was going to, but it didn’t seem like a good time.”

Scott finally looked up, “What do you mean it wasn’t a good time?” His voice was hurt, but his face was still angry.

Allison decided it was probably safe to look away. She finally took looked at the couch Derek was lounged on fully. There were two bodies on the couch; one was in a state of undress that would have made her look away if it were anybody else, especially Derek. She had to gasp at all the little bruises, little purple and green marks, blaring hurt, and yet, they were oddly all the same. She couldn’t help but wonder what made them, until she saw a fresh one on the spot just above his left nipple. Teeth marks, human teeth marks. Hickies.

Stiles saw her face, squawked again, and covered up his body as best he could, sitting in the middle of Derek’s legs, awkwardly looking around, half falling to the floor, Derek oozed comfort and annoyance, but not anger. Allison blushed a bit.

Stiles finally answered, “I was going to tell you last week, right after I kissed him,” Allison raised an eyebrow to them both, but Stiles didn’t catch the meaning of it, “And then I was going to tell you yesterday, but he picked me up after school, and then you were working, and now you are here.”

Scott looked up, a nervous smile threatened his face, “But we hung out last night, until like eleven. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Stiles looked at Scott, “You were the one to mandated full silence during our gaming sessions, because you think that when I talk I cheat. Not my fault.”

Scott looked at his feet, scuffing them against the floor a bit, Derek looked a bit impatient. He hmphed, and Allison could help but laugh a bit. “When I told you to keep an eye on Stiles, I didn’t mean that you should go beyond that.”

Scott looked up at Allison, his face obviously showing confusion; Derek just wrapped his arms around Stiles shoulders, possessive and protective in one simple and inexcusable gesture. Stiles didn’t even know what was going on, but he still leaned back and nuzzled Derek’s scruff with his hair. Derek looked at Allison pointedly, a question in his eyes, but she just smiled, and continued to smile.

She had thought to herself that Derek was special, that the woman he loved wouldn’t be good enough for him, not strong enough for him. She hadn’t expected this, but it fit. It made sense. They would make each other happy, but they would drive each other insane. And that was what they needed. She knew it. She was at peace with it.

Scott spoke again, finally, “Well, I guess we should get going.”

He was clearly uncomfortable, but Allison couldn’t help but want to stay, just to egg on Derek a bit, “So what did you in, Der? Was it the bad jokes? The hair cut? The eyes? The butt? I mean, it’s not much, but it looks cute in jeans.”

Derek’s arms clamped around Stiles, making the slender boy wince a bit, but he answered, like she knew he would, “Kissing him is the only thing that shuts him up.” Allison wondered if that was true, as she knew exactly how much Stiles talked, even with his mouth full. “And it kind of sucks, because it was how much he talked, even when I was sleeping on the couch, that did me in.”

Allison hadn’t expected that. But then again, Derek would probably enjoy the endless noise, especially when his head was already filled with voices, like hers was still. But she also knew he would keep them with him, like she would keep hers. Even the unpleasant ones were still better than nothingness. She smiled at him, and he smiled at her, and she uncocked the gun, put the safety on and pulled out the clip. All in all it had been ten minutes of easy conversation, mostly.

Scott was mumbling something under his breath, and Stiles was responding to it somewhat conscious of how he looked.

Derek was happy. She was happy. They had what they needed, and they were happy. She couldn’t deny it, he had been right all along. Stupid werewolf.

“Well, I guess we better get, Stiles, Derek.” She said, walking out the door, pulling her key out of the door. “Say hi to the cat for me, wherever he got to.”

Stiles looked at Derek, “You have a cat!?”

Allison couldn’t help but laugh, “We’re sorry,” she said, “you two go back to doing whatever you were doing, and I’ll talk to you another time. Answer my text next time. Got it?”

Derek nodded, and she closed the door.

She barely made it to the elevator before she heard a small hiss. She barely made it to the bottom floor before Scott started whimpering and groaning like he was sick. Apparently they were still in range that his ears could hear something, but she wasn’t going to ask.

They got into her car, and she smiled at him, “You look like someone just kicked your puppy.”

Scott looked at her, hurt. “Stiles and Derek… I think I’ll be ok with it, but trust me, if you knew what they had been planning on doing before we showed up, you would think someone kicked your puppy too.”

She smiled at her boyfriend, the boy she loved with more of her heart than she ever knew she had, the boy who had waited for her, sitting outside her window, and smiled even wider. “Well, I bet I have a pretty good idea what they were up to. But let’s say we forget about them, and try something on our own. What do you say?”

Scott looked at her, his mind instantly on the same page as hers, “Ok, but give me twenty minutes.”

Allison thought about it, “Let’s get burgers, then we can go back to your place and just cuddle for a bit, ok?”

Scott looked at her, eyes full of questions and wanting and love. She couldn’t deny him any longer, she didn’t want to. “Ok.”

She went to the burger joint downtown, put in her order for a strawberry milkshake, pulled off her olive green jacket that was too small for her, but she was wearing layers, and it looked really cute. Scott took the seat across from her, and she smiled at him. She smiled, and she was happy.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a blind spot. A blind spot that was the perfect place to hide from everyone else in the diner. She smiled at it too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOODNESS! if you are reading this, you stuck with it, bad plot points and all. So, thank you! I know that this ending probably isn't what you wanted, but it was the ending that this book needed.
> 
> I am excited for season 3, I am excited for everything, and i just want to say thank you (as unlikely as it seems that they will get it) to all the actors, directors, lighting supervisors and writers that made Teen wolf to begin with. Thank you for reading this work, even though I don't like it. Thank you for reading this note.
> 
> And for anyone who commented? THANKS! hope you lovely people continue to be awesome.
> 
> Oh, and Kudos? those helped me get through this, especially when I had 13 chapter writen and no end game. So THANKS!

**Author's Note:**

> Because I know that this is crazy, I apologize for any hurt feelings or uncomfortable tensions that this may cause for anyone. I hope you can forgive me.


End file.
